my father was a Red Sox fan
so I didn’t know basketball
never held one until sixth grade
never appreciated the rhythm
of the game the way it moves
like a sonnet from side to side
I was so broke I even had to borrow
Buster’s gun to do this. So here I am
in a Santa Monica restaurant bathroom
having run out of gags, routines, sorrow
I hallucinate about how I could destroy their lives.
Like a wasp, I’ll sting them,
And let the boil fester for days.
I’d pick one with an allergy
In hopes that my poison corrupts them.
“Sure.” I held my breath and unzipped my gig bag, lamenting my lack of a hard-shell case. Then I kneeled on the floor, right beside the New Releases display, and launched into a derivative funk riff I’d been woodshedding for a few weeks. I played it far too fast, but with some flashy 7th chords and percussive strumming, I thought it sounded like I halfway knew what I was doing.
To prepare his cast before making the film The Three Burials of Melquidas Estrada, Tommy Lee Jones had them read The Stranger by Albert Camus since the theme of alienation is central to both that book and the film they were about to shoot. Before he commenced filming the movie Heat, director Michael Mann gave the cast copies of the book No Beast So Fierce by former convicted felon turned author Edward Bunker about a recently paroled convict and his attempt to go straight. In my senior year of college, before we began rehearsals of the one-act play I wrote “Show Me Your Tong Po,” I invited the cast over to my house to watch Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor for similar reasons as those directors.
TELEVISION / Angel on Wheels / Jessica Hudson
A black-and-white behind-the-scenes photo from Episode 12, “Angels on Wheels,” shows Fawcett in a roller derby rink, leaning forward, hands on knees, smiling at the camera.
Yesterday he texted me the definition of a new word he was excited to learn, “freudenfreude.” It’s best translated as “the bliss we feel when someone else succeeds, even if we weren’t directly involved.” This morning, as I watched him watch me scarf down my favorite donut from Dunkin’ Donuts (a creation filled with something called “cookie butter”), I realized he’d given me a word to describe the look on his face.
Last week, when I helped his dad at the appliance store, Guy called to say he couldn't make it. He didn't ask to talk to me; just told his dad he was meeting up with someone. He didn't even remember he was standing me up.
whoever it is they'll be blaring “Chorus”
Vince Clarke’s synth summer 91’s CD101 soundtrack
it will be driving you moving you
toward the future
FILM / A Severing / Wyeth Leslie
How shattering it is to be told by someone you consider a friend that they no longer have room for you in their life. I’m sure you see where this is going. Perhaps this isn’t even your first Banshees break-up piece that you’ve read.
Each of these characters in Starting Out in the Evening has their own needs and desires, but they unselfishly interact with each other, learning from each other the importance of sharing life. For people who like a meaty intellectual story, there is much here to enjoy. No less than Roger Ebert said that Langella's performance was Oscar worthy. That the Oscars ignored it only confirms that movies of the mind and emotional depth play second fiddle to movies of entertaining merriment.
I was clueless, wandering like teens do, 19 and stuck in between, not child, not ripe, an unfolding libertine. When Streets of Fire debuted the next year, I saw it here too, and was sure you shared my obsessions with Springsteen, Morrison, too, holding shadows of both in your shaman walk and Seventeen-approved hair. I guess two years on top are more than most get.
It’s also true that even after only one listen I recognized that this was one slipshod record. To that point in his career, Marc Bolan had not been known for sophisticated composition, or even for bothering to write both a verse and a chorus in his songs (bridges were not to be imagined). Even by that low standard, however, the songs on this record were half-written.
TELEVISION / TV Boyfriend: Evolution / Katie Darby Mullins
This story starts with a chihuahua named Pablo. No. I’ll go back further. Criminal Minds is a television procedural that started in 2005, which is when I first fell in love with my TV boyfriend
➢ I want to have control.
➢ I wonder what I am doing here.
➢ I want my skin to make someone cry.
FILM / Captain Canada's Movie Rodeo / March 2023 / Gabriel Ricard
Gabe revisits films which he previously gave poor ratings to in this month’s Captain Canada’s Movie Rodeo.
Apollo’s there
battling the serpent in silence,
scorpions crushed beneath
his sandaled feet.
Writhing coils
strain against corded flesh
of the sun god at night.
I don’t say anything at this point but give him another shrug. Why does he keep calling me kiddo? Why not just say Lyssa or Missy or something? See?—I hate being called kiddo, but I’m not yet ready to tell him. I confess I like the puckering shape of his mouth with his emphasis on the letter O—kiddo, like he was about to whistle.
Maybe something in my childhood, my white-knuckled temper, or my red-cheeked shame. Too many ladoos, not enough purple foods. Was it the pressures of architecture school, glue-gummy fingers holding balsa wood together until the garbage trucks crowed at dawn.