A Gogol Bordello Weekend

"We've conquered Jamaican dance hall, what's next? Peruvian rumbah speed metal?"

In that one sentence Eugene Hutz summed up the lingua franca that is Gogol's music. There's something for everyone in the gypsy part of town. Or you can say that from the screaming violin that makes one think of a fiddler on the roof of the world hopped up on steroids and speed, a juggernaut of that viiolent screaming little fiddle. Maybe its the accordian player in his striped shirt that makes you think convict and sailor wrapped up in one, or the two girls that come dancing out on stage beating cymbals and bass drum, who knows, sometimes I think its Eugene's ability to turn the slamming of a mike into a new percussion section that sets them apart. Whatever the secret sauce, seeing them live was both a treat and a joy that is incomporable. If you ever get a chance, run, don't walk, and do whatever needs be done in order to procure tickets to see their under dog world strike.

So really, what makes it that amazing? Simply put, energy. "Fuck it! Its Friday night" was their raison d'être to play a 45 minute encore that was nearly as long as their set. Yeah, they gave of themselves for two friggin hours! I couldn't keep up, I don't know how they were able to do it, but Slim's was on fire. People were jumping, fans were screaming and "dogs were barking." Its unreal how much they bring to bear, sonically on stage. How you can get lost in that perverse folkloric feal that is amped, stretched, pulled and refashioned into a sound bolder than the lands from which it hails. Its gypsy music that appropriated punk rock, that stole the gypsy soul, that commandeered the rhythm section from a couple dozen different countries and created a unique flavor of rock and roll that leaves you deaf, drained and exhausted from the joy of participating in something that is as much give as it is take. I'm not sure these cats could've sustained that rampage for that long had it not been for the fact the crowd was a perfect conduit to share in that electrical feeling of complete abandon that comes from live music. Yeah, its Dionysian in the pure sense of intoxication, it brings the entire audience, the space which they fill, the sound which permeates all of them, into that unique state of primordial oneness when all form ceases to matter: it doesn't matter how you dance so long as you're dancing, or how you applaude, or how you salute, nothing ceases to matter as you melt into a cosmic vibration.

Ok, so I'm waxing a little poetic here. I know, a bit of the deep end, but so was the entire show. But it was kinda perfect that way, you know? The end of the show, or the encore, or their second set as the case may be, featured the girls back on stage with cymbals and bass drum. The drum found its way onto the hands of the crowd and the girl lept up onto the drum straddling it and continuing to play while the crowd held her atop their heads. She came down off the drum while Eugene turned the mike into a small bongo by placing a plastic bucket over it and using a pair of drumsticks to knock out a rockin' rhythm. He decided to trade places with the little drummer girl and lept up on the drum and proceeded to stand straight up, nearly to the height of the lighting tressel with arms raised proclaiming victory. Yeah, they left their mark.

The next night after my hearing returned we went to see Everything Is Illuminated that features Eugene as co(?)star? I don't know, he kinda stole the show if you ask me and although "the rigid search" is the brainchild of Jonathan, it seems like we're more interested in the life and well being of Alex, our hip-hop loving Ukranian Jew in denial. There's a kind of unfinished quality to the movie, something that is left to be questioned when its all over. The film is a mixture of black humor (the first half) and family drama that reaches back to the war years and reminds us about the very personal, humbling stories of individuals. Those vast numbers of dead mean little unless charged with the intimacy of a single face, a pair of hands, the birth and death that is one person's life. I was reminded of the life and daeth of Celan, Amery and Borowski. They all lived, survived the camps, the war but succumbed to their own questions: survivor's guilt.

See both, the latter being more accessable than the first, but if you can, see them, at the very least, you'll get a kick out of the antics, at the most, you'll fall passionately in love with the night and feel drunk even if you hardly drank.

Just a sunday night with nothing really interesting to write...

As I approached mi casa I heard the familiar tenor of Russian being spoken. I looked up and noticed two people walking up Balboa. Both were thoroughly engaged on their cell phones, they were both speaking russian, they were both on their cell phones. Some part of me chuckled hearing how "Zhenya, wait wait wait, the garage door will be openned, we'll be right there." They were infinately important in their own minds. I kinda dug it and at the same time had to say "oy vey!"

Went to see "Two For The Money" this weekend with Pacino and Mathew (I'm not even gonna try spelling that last name.) Well, what can I say? Al is always kinda brilliant, but the role is far to safe. We know he can be fired up, we know he can seem creepy. WE've seen him be fired up like a batptist minister way too often: Devil's Advocate, City Hall, Any Given Sunday and Heat. He does those roles well. It feels a little like the guy is getting type cast. I mean he needs to take some more risks. I suppose this late in his career he's had a whole bag of risks and has done the great roles, but it seems there are more in store for him if he wanted them. I want to see more small projects like Searching for Richard or even a Frankie & Johnny or say something like Angels in America. Thats where the untapped potential lies. Since the days of "Dog Day Afternoon" we know this man can do rage. We know he can raise the little man complex to all new level as seen Scarface, he has the fire in his belly and a voice to fan the flames to temperatures deep in the Kelvin. I want to see the quiet side of paccino, something a bit more refined, or at least contrasted against his fiery and explosive side. I think that's what I loved about Scent of a Woman, Frank, the character, was a serious looser, and you could see that in the fatigue of a man who is almost as tired of being an asshole as he is a cripple. But hell, he's a pleasure to watch, don't get me wrong, I just want to see him in a different capacity, that's all.

I wondering if I have the strength to wake myself up around 3 am and see if I can catch the moon hang over Ocean Beach from Sutro Heights Park. It would be a lovely sight for sure. Take the medium format up there and hope I can snap off a couple longish exposures in black and white without having the frames overlap. It would truly tickle me, hell, we'll see... (Breath should not be held in any way shape or form).

Just a little silliness...

Its been quite a while since I decided to boldly strike out and do something with my never ending supply of facial hair. There was a time when I would change it, constantly, not it goes from somewhat smooth shaven, to rough, to corse, to stubbly to downright dangerous and scraggy. I chop it off and it grows back. So, I've decided to have a little fun with it, as its been a while, a short progression or history of my moustache which started as a goatie leading up to and in NYC, and, well just got shorter when I came back...

The Fu Man Chu

The Fu Man Chu a la Gene Simmons

Inspired by the Goombah

Rapier thin... mu ha ha ha

more... more... more... not us...

raise your arms
to speak your mind
raise your arms
and cross the line
raise your arms
and raise them high
raise your arms
prepare to...

"unnumbered" for Not us

promise you won't
tell a soul what's
been told to do
shouldn'tve been
done to anyone

More f[or](rom) PANOPTICON

Readership existed before the work had found adequate spaces. The unfolding of distance became regarded as the annex of space. Tearing up the script he hoped that it might stop the pendulum from swinging, tearing up the script he thought it might acquit him of swinging. His actions seemed just a matter for theoretical principle. He’s hamstrung the poor halfwit still feels possibility is just as possible as event prior to memory. Simple formations of sincere gestures might serve as both the penal colony and the code (of arms) to distinguish the guilty from the already punished. But he faced it like it was foregoing both the blindfold and the cigarette he watched in astonishment as the light passed through.

PANOPTICON

He stepped in a room where the light fell exactly in the same place at the same moment and stopped falling into its own space. The ownership of the light’s space must seem a comical thing: to say it with precision one must preface it with the owning of the owner. Walking circumferentially about the central luminosity he stopped to discover the absence of both color and prismatic possibility. Pondering the separation, by degrees, by a metric system yet to be invented in the west or east, or a by way of directional analysis, pondering it slowly he discovered how it was ennobled appearing spiritualized with so much fear in a shimmering refraction. Insofar as origins: its dangerous to be one’s own accomplice.

Not surprisingly the descending stair case actually was heading up. For years he had sat by the river hoping to write himself into a book; this caused him great anguish and he cried himself to sleep in a waterless bed of smooth rock. Morning came from the smell of something faintly aromatic about the night. One wasn’t suggestive of the other yet he could’ve sworn that something like twenty of each had passed. Being caught unawares was not unlike waking from a dream having lost something you never really had before you went to sleep, curling around the pillow he swore that the face he was kissing was made of more than just feathers and strand. This much is known for certain when the pillow was ripped open with a knife.

(1)

1a

N. would say to C.
that trust grows to inscribe itself
beautifully if not thoroughly
through the whole array of annular cells

1b

Governor is to governed
glaring back from the central phallus
asking a single question
which is called the inequity of thought

1c

The incipient ring
is a thoroughfare closed in on itself
directing the flow of containment
the end crowns a beginning

1d

The smoked reflection of his own face
in the mirror has the same weight
from the surface of the curve
it registers the flaws in the glass

(2)

2a

The whole family can visit on special days
they bring with them a wardrobe
taller than the space in which it stood
filled with globes trimmed shrubs and falling towels

2b

He asks the tower to make itself known
hoping that an ancient inborn art
will chase the light
illuminating the ignorant torpor

2c

Without asking the question
he ascertains invisibility
globally manifesting at once
as a clean impeccably correct webbing

2d

Never a correct little woman
invalidating detail so that only
the form remains the same
when mounting the scaffold together

(3)

3a

Being the only one point
each door is to enter is to exit
is to passage is to C. simply the portal
by mutual consent on certain days

3b

C. looked in to see
if the overexposure were just a
figment of his imagination hoping
that his substance was false

3c

Staring back the same way
with a chalk mark on his shoulder
to clarify if he is who he seems to be
so as to conclude a pact of silence

3d

Inherently knowing that he isn’t held
in by locks or locked against himself
C. prefers the corner vestibule
where matter is weeps and time dozes.

(4)

4a

C. doubted the stride in her steps
before their myopic gaze she stole
his head from his collarbones
and undressed him into dissolution.

4b

She walks making quick steps
on the cold stones freezing each step
this was considered to be the acme
in the diverse realms of modern thought

4c

Halting once by the fireside
to let her shadows play preamble
she makes tight circles forgiving
them from discontinuing to darken

4d

Had the observers seen him enter
or if she had entered and stripped
the walls of myth and fairytales
where people escape from prison

(5)

5a

If the crime had dimension
if it could have been disrobed
as being more than picking flowers
growing in the lesions of the wall

5b

Then it might be said that childhood
pertained to preparing for adulthood
securing nonexistence is a big
leap for existential dummies.

5c

C. was being as he would say
himself being a difference
of opinion between the family man
and that splendid furniture

5d

The others would watch and see
if light passed through C.
leaving a chance reflection
like ornamented and filled copies.

DC to NYC (Rewritten)

This is a kind of apocrypha
traveling by train in the mid afternoon
when the sun can’t decide between two twilights

downed leaves and their trees
in contrast to the west
this is all seasonal

however blurred
every tenement
is really called
a tenement living
apart from itself
in black and white

the sum of knowledge: brick can be stained
iron light posts: limp just off center

a settled wilderness
whispers things
you might hear
among strangers
that one white post
behind the corner of soot

these tracks were never meant to travel
this fast makes me miss something
essential

independence corridor
causes me tension

she wore a peach colored skirt
and white sweater in stifling heat
whatever she hid I could imagine it better

by Philly’s station you cry
missing greener sentiment
mission and child-like ancestry
so much for youth
trees seem to migrate with you

More...

From The Left

A translation of canonical Russian art
(vagrancy)

As to be read
this must have
a conversation? pieces?
what a mess of fingers that can’t
ever seem to stop bleeding.

Under the sky—
or if you would prefer
“all things steel shadow” still
intentionally bludgeoned,
uprooting the disengagement,
so that we all know Tretyakov
becomes us to hang this
a meadow of corpse’s

dust for now.

From The Right
From the illegitimacy of invention
(criticism)

This presents
significant rubbish
when from reading
that angels height and mass
makes plastic dreams

a really scary occurance
the northerners think
they’re European
bold enough to make
hanging black squares
in white rooms
seem mildly patriotic
—what would’ve Lenin
thought?

NYC - In retrospect

If there's a doctor for every malady (as some presume there's a solution even if its simply that non-sequitur "time") then the conversation and comraderie of old friends and new with a large helping of good food was my personal physician.

I started saturday with a trip to the WTC sight. I didn't know what to expect but I had an idea of it. I wondered, as I rode the train, how would Simonides immortalize those two titans? I couldn't help to think that I would only see it as a big hole in the ground, a construction site that was yet to be finished, or even begun for that matter. Unlike the post 9-11 state of mind where everyone became a New Yorker, the twins were never a part of the landscape of my imagination. I remember the photos I took in 99 that caught them like stalagtites in the background. The last image was taken from the back of a cab heading to JFK and you couldn't imagine the skyline without them there. The site is fenced off and people come to see it. I wondered what they were feeling, how the language that all the various individuals spoke helped them make sense of something that was probably removed from their day to day lives. I wondered if the memorial would be sufficient and how thick the mythology would be twisting both the language it uses to be remembered and the manifesto of terms we are now inundated with.

From there it was a trip to St. Mark's Bookstore in the village where I had coffee at the Cloister cafe, overgrown with vines and then it was off to the empire state to climb babel. I bought the express ticket as I was running out of time and was bound to be heading back to Brooklyn sooner than later, for our trip to Brighton Beach. Yes, its a terrible waste of money, but it felt great to walk to the front of every single line and choose the pace of my viewing experience instead of waiting in the snaking lines of humanity. When I reached the top I suddenly remembered that this was now, as it was over 30 years ago, the tallest point in the city (if I'm not mistaken) and sitauted there in the center, king to the heavens. How did G-d find this shinning emblem of art deco(dance)? Was there further confusion to be had in our restless and unending search for the principium individuationis? Who knows, but there was an incredible peace with 25 miles of visibility on an absolutely wonderful wind swept september afternoon that even with the bustling throng 86 stories above reality, it was clear and thick, calm, humbling and just a little jaw dropping.

that ornate antenna

south toward downtown & the statue in the bay

north toward central park & uptown

self portrait looking north photographing south

The Q runs out to Coney Island and somewhere along that bumpy trip that exposed more and more of the stations track before and after to light, and the amassed trash, we found our stop: Brighton Beach (little odessa, or as the signs say, little russia by the sea.) I can't say I love it, but I was amused by the absolute saturation. This is a neighborhood that has been taken over and morphed into something that is now a collective mockery of a place so vastly distant and different that I'm not sure either exists except as a subjective mirror representation of historical gentrification. I've heard that the neighborhood was very poor and run down, not sure about this but I'm sure I'll find out once I do a bit more research. Its an odd place. I can hear my mother tongue here and there, the images of Russian mobsters seem to exist and hang on the very footfalls of every slick haired russkie going to and fro. People stroll the streets as I had sen them do in the nieghborhood of Sokol in Moscow. We walked the three or four blocks to the end of the strip where Cafe Kashkar, small, unassuming, demure even. What lurks in that kitchen is nothing short of Zorba's "God-Devil", the one that makes you made and lifts you up at the same time. I think M- summed it up best at 2 in the morning "I want more, that stuff is addictive!" The food hit the spot, we had a feast of Lagman, Shurpa, Samsa, Eggplant Salad, Glass Noodle Salad, 3 Different kinds of meat in the form of Shashlik, several pots of tea, 3/4 of a liter of vodka, four Baltikas and a leposhka. Yeah, we ate, we stuffed ourselves with onion and lamb and all rocked to the rhythm of Tajik music that seemed fit for belly dancing. It was a pleasure I hadn't had since St. Petersburg and Caravan Saray. I'm ready to go down to LA and see if Uzbekistania on Sunset is any good. Damn, I want more too.

Sated, full of food and drink we sauntered down the street stopping at the gastronoms to fill M-'s backpack and giggle our drunken heads off. This was both the end and the beginning of the night as it found us dancing to Beck, drinking a liter of wine and then a pitcher of beer as we wandered through Park Slope grapsing at the receeding tatters of the night that weighed down by both night and our day to day jobs, makes keeping up the pace of our super human efforts in Russia a near impossibility. Still, it was excellent and I feel richer for the experience despite the hangover the next morning as I rode to JFK.

Thank you NYC and friends...

Tom, Masha, Kristen
post Uzbeki bliss
(waiting for the Q)

NYC - Turn me loose...

I pilfered the title from Heather Hazuka's NYC Turn Me On. I remember stumbling across it in our submission piles when on staff for Fourteen Hills. I argued strongly for its includionin the journal because I found the language, well, provacative; its about a one night stand. I just spent my first night, since the last one back in '99, in NYC. Sleeping at the Carlton was nice, it was nice and sanitary. With the curtains drawn it was like any other room, anywhere else, at any time of the year: non-descript. Last night thought, on Masha's floor, in something of a "hot summer" night, the window open, amidst a symphony of crickets and rustling of leaves, I kind of felt like I was sleeping "in" the NYC that lives in the imagination.

Before drifting off into the wild blue yonder, I stuck my head outside. Night is vastly brighter here, its not a deep thick night like one might hope. No, there's so much light polution in the city that the night has ceased to be itself. It almost feels like someone has found a way to illuminate the white in the clouds and turn the night sky into a Turner like spectacle. Last night at the Guggenheim I saw several paintings that were absolutely marvelous landscapes. One was called The Ninth Wave, and another was simply entitled Night. I can't remember their artists, its in the cataloug I purchased but I don't feel like getting that at this moment, no, but the sky had that strange iradescence that can only happen through the fancy of an artist's eye.

Oh, I've finally figured out the Subway here. I have a sense of direction and know what the "diirection" of the trains means in terms of where I'll wind up. I took the train from our downtown office to Brooklyn, and then eventually back into the city to the Guggenheim in Midtown. The whole Bronx vs. Brooklyn, north to south and the east to westness of the streets vs. the avenues: I get it. I had a slice of pizza on the way back to Brooklyn, it was damn good... damn good... and I'm not the biggest fan of new york style pizza. I've always pictured myself as more of deep dish Chicgao kind of pizza lover...

The museum was amazing. There's a historical exhibit on right now called "Russia!" It starts with early icons and progresses through the centuries up through 20th century and into the present sort of work that features a parodied marlboro sign saying simply: "Malevich Sold Out." I finally made it. I've been dreaming about visiting the Guggenheim for years and years and years. I walked that spiral gallery marveling at the architecture and the art that's completely hidden from view when you stand at the base of the serpent's trail. Its stunning, FLW really hit one out of the park with that building. The Chagal and Kandinsky collections were out, or selections fromthem, and the permanent collection that features Cezanne, Degs and a slew of Picassos that range from just post traditionalist to the 1930s cubism that devolved from earlier forms of into the pure abstract shapes and simple color tones of the final modality of that movement, all were represented.

From there it was back to Brooklyn, say it with me, Broowk-lynn. Oh I had a new york moment: what is that do you ask? It has to do with language and the thick new york accent that I hear all around me. When I walked into the Houston (say it, House-ton, not Hue-ston) street station. I knew I had to take the two train to Brooklyn but all the signs said 1 train. I went down, bought my metro card, went through the turnstile, hoping to find an agent at a booth, but nada and then walked around. I walked to the far end of the platform and then saw the agent. Walked out from the platform and asked him if the 2 passed through and where to catch the train into Brooklyn. He said to transfer at Chambers. He was covered with tattos, had that "nuyorican" look about him and wore some thick chains. I asked if I had to pay to get back onto the platform. He said "didj you jus come from dthere?" "Yeah" I repleid... and then it happened "Just walk through the gates baby." Yeah, with the perfect amount of self assured sass and that accent taht I love, and I passed through just in time ot catch the 2. Perfect.

DC to NYC

This is a kind of apocrypha
traveling by train in the mid afternoon
when the sun can’t decide between the two twilights

down the corridor the leaves and their trees
in contrast to the west this is all seasonal

however blurred you can’t forget
the dispersion of trash
how every tenement is really called
a tenement living apart from itself
breathes in black and white

the sum of knowledge: brick can be stained
iron light posts: limp just off center

while the tracks thread through
a long settled wilderness
whispers and the things you might here
among a caravan of strangers
while you pass that one white post
sitting behind the corner of soot
these tracks were never meant to travel
this fast makes me miss something
essential

independence corridor causes me tension
she wore a peach colored skirt
and white sweater in stifling heat
whatever she hid I could imagine it better

by the Philadelphia station you cry
missing something greener than mock sentiment
lofty in the mission and child like ancestry
so much for youth and the west’s wild and ancient
trees here seem to migrate with you

I’ve been carrying a leave I picked up near Union station
it must’ve been the only one for a thousand miles

and I can’t imagine that light grows brighter
esconced in conrete.

Messages & Cinema

"They call me the lord of war, but I think that may be you."

It was a good weekend cinematically speaking. I was transported to Africa and placed into the thick of the western assumption of what Western Africa is like: a genocidal soup where life has been cheapend to the point of guinnea pigs and or rendered like the parts of animal stock.

My first trip to Africa was friday night int he form of The Constant Gardner based on the John Le Carre novel by the same name. This is a gorgeous film, a treat for the eyes, a study in chiaroscuro, a balance and harmony between the shakiness of the hand held camera shot to the longer contemplative sweep of smooth ariel shots over the sometimes barren and moon-like terrain of Kenya & Sudan.

As for plot, well its a bit threadbare in places, predictable is a better way to think of it. The bad guys are bad and you can tell from he git go which ones will have the ultimate crisis of conscience that will turn the tide of the film a la deus ex machina. Where this film seems to stumble plot wise it slams splash down homeruns through Meirelles' direction and ability to convey emotion through blur. I enjoy a blurred shot now and again, a bit of abstraction, a study in the way that light, like water, penetrates nearly everything that isn't hermetically sealed. Meirelle obscures the detail in his chosen blur shots just enough as to create a mask of the mood or emtion on the face of Fiennes, he's at once that character and the actor playing the character wearing a mask and creating the mask. The subltle moods and gloomy darkness of the Eruopean scenes are balanced with the striking color and eary heat waves that rise from the very earth as if its been super heated to the point of an oven. I loved "watching" this movie. I was at the edge of my seat but not due to suspense, but because I knew what was going to happen and I wanted to see more of Meirelle's Africa. If you go to see this film, don't expect a 'Name of the Rose' mystery but rather a well done film for the eyes. There's nothing to be had, nothing that you haven't seen or known and the bad guy is once again the big corporation. The redemption is the quality of the film and not the script.

But on the flip side of this African coin is Lord of War starring Nicolas Cade and Jared Leto as a couple arms dealing brothers. Cage is wonderful and seems to meld the best of previous roles and having an odd kind of Cusak quirk to a character that finds ways of rationolizing a demonic job. "Lets put it this way, if you find me on your front door step, then you probably did something to bring me there." says Martin Blanc as his ultimate afirmation of righteousness and reason to be a killer for hire. Ian Holme's character, a competing arms dealer reminds the morally depraved Cage that "one has to choose sides." What does become vividly clear from the film is that no matter what side you choose, you're ultimately going to loose. The race is to be the last looser rather than the first.

In many ways, this film is a copy of Blow starring Johnny Depp. Here you have the underdog choosing a path that is somewhat left of middle, becoming rather good at it, and then branching out to near global domination only to suffer a biblical fall. It shows how one can't quite leave in that sense of "everytime I think I'm out they pull me back in." No, there's no escape from global arms dealing. Beyond the bad Russian accents when Cage & Leto recite their creed "Bratya v aruzhya" (Brothers in Arms), this isn't a bad film for most of the two some odd hour course. Nichols has a sense of irony about his direction and his characters. He crafts his shots and even the openning scene. His previous effort, Gattaca, had the same sense of somber atmosphere that one could amost step into. There were enough details omitted, and a sense of style to that world, that helped suspend one's disbelief and in the sense of theatre, create that invisble fourth wall where the audience forgets its sitting in a precenium based viewing house and is a part of the action. This film too had the choicest details of the 80's, the suits, the moods, music, color and hair styles to convince one that we were witnessing a near Oliver North reenactment and that Reagan had just decalred the Soviet Union and anounced that the bombings would commence in five minutes.

But the bombs do fall and the Kalashnikov is the bright shinning star that sometimes outshadows Cage in the form of a Gold Plated model carried by Baptiste's son and heir. If Alexander Kalashnikov hadn't been wounded in WWII this world might have been a vastly different place. Its the prince of all assault rifles, heir-aparent to the sword of gabriel, it is judge jurry and executioner cloaked in wood and steel. This film is as much about its identity and mtyhology as it is about the rampant sales of weapons to every faction in the world by a man that literally believes his own kool-aid when he says "we don't kill, we just sell the guns."

The film begins like a bildungsroman that runs the gamut of black comedy but somewhere about 3/4 of the way through it turns into a little too much off a diatribe for me. The comedy seems to end, and what is left of comedy seems to be a bit dull. The message had been hammered through the satire and then the film feels like it has to try and put those finishing nails in with a serious mallet. No, this is the problem with these kinds of films, they begin well enough as humorous satirical pieces and then become melo-dramas. Why is it that directors feel the need to become dramatists when they were doing such a fine job as comedic tragedians?! This is something Nietzsche would've abhored as he hated the new comedy of Euripedes and exalted in the tragedies of Aeschylus. In much the same way this film borrows from the latter playwright and casts it in the tone of the newer more light hearted comedian. This was a good formual from the beginning of the film to the point where Nichols shifts gears.

I don't have a good answer as to how a film maker can avoid this especially when you consider that our friend cage is disowned by his family, his wife leaves him taking his son, he's jailed and his brother is killed, how do you keep the black humor aspect strong in the face of all that drama?! I don't know, but somewhere before that the film lost me and I lost interest in this character that was doing a fine job of satarizing a grim world that is viewed in the reflection of a brass casing.

XCII

It started

the killing jar

sparring first

honors

the beauty

died over

breakfast or

body counts

the wounds

delayed

answering

de profundis

clamavi ad te

by tea time

cheats

the narrows

rent free

patricide

still stones

stiller than

stoned

and what will

spend

for which

ends now

how spells

meals

basically

this is

not presuming

an apron

enough

to cover

the dead

in this place

each hand

must

cook

then finally

entombed