temporarily edge for thesis purposes

so right now i'm in a self-inflicted party exile as i have like a month to go before my thesis show. i have been working away, yeah, but i really need to stop fucking around. as a result, i will not be going out or doing anything fun, really, until tuesday, february 26. or maybe monday, february 25, as that is the day i finish installing. anyway, my home life for the past few weeks is as follows: camped out on a couch, swaddled in a faux-fur 'throw', computer, books, tray of tools, clay working shit. the work that i have to do -- namely, faithfully recreating the skeletons of my childhood pets from porcelain -- is tedious, but not exactly mind-bending. the ONLY thing that keeps my ass on that seat, semi-focused, is TELEVISION. maybe it's apparent, but when i have to really examine the passive interests that i truly and indulgently love, tv is pretty much winning by a landslide. anyway, on that note, what follows are my notes on weekend 'work' viewing...

THE BURNING (1981) -- on sunday nights, i think, IFC shows a bunch of grindhouse movies. sometimes they're worth the time, and i say this one is. friday the 13th rip-off with tons of gratuitous violence, including a dude getting his fingers snipped off by giant shears wielded by a burn-victim psycho. this is a summer camp slasher flick with lots of titties and all that. awesome music from yes's rick wakeman.

MADMAN (uhh, also 1981 maybe?) -- another summer camp slasher flick, but seriously, don't bother with this one. boring, not that bloody, not that summer camp-y...i forgot this was on after a while. maybe i took in something valuable through osmosis.

RUSH (1991) -- can't believe i never saw this, and i never knew it was about narcs. duh. i remember when this movie came out, i was maybe in fifth grade, and i was familiar with certain scenes due to clips being present in the 'tears in heaven' video. to my ten-year-old self, the scenes of two people rolling around in beds, on floors, etc., all sweaty and intense, read as the sort of sex scene that i didn't really 'get'. upon watching, though, i know that the bulk of these clips were more like withdrawal than sex...SAVE FOR THE SCENE WHERE JASON PATRIC RAPES THE SPEED RIGHT OUTTA JENNIFER JASON LEIGH. i mean, what the FUCK? anyway, 1970's texas drug rings, greg allman, a hot beardo. this movie is a total downer btw.

APOCOLYPTO -- perhaps the single awesome thing mel gibson has had a hand in.

NEW YEAR'S EVIL (early 80's?) -- uh tuned this off after like 15 minutes, and i NEVER do that because my standards are sooo low. anyway, i'm down with the presence of punk/metal in horror movies -- 1987's 'the gate' and 'trick or treat' (i think that's what it's called, with an alienated teen called 'the rag man' getting haunted by his fave dead rock star's demonic spirit) are awesome examples -- but new year's evil sort of failed to deliver on this, and many, fronts. in the first 15 minutes, anyway whatevs. like my head isn't filled with enough shit anyway.

also watched plenty of reality crap like 'rock of love 2' and more 'celebrity rehab' and maybe like 3 hours of law and order. and yeah, i did get a lot of work done. kind of.

celebrity rehab ep. 2 highlight

ahhh, jeff conaway, just when it seemed we were about to lose you to the great walk-outta-rehab move, dr. drew turned it around -- and how! he didn't have to rely on his extensive knowledge of 'addictionography' or whatever the fuck he calls it -- no, dr. drew didn't even have to utter a word. as soon as he entered the clinic, seemingly arriving from home or something as he was dressed all casual, conaway's glazed-over eyes lit up and he immediately mellowed, forgot about his withdrawal for just a moment, and genuinely complimented dr. drew on his nice arms, showcased in a laid-back black t-shirt and apparently invisible inside of his typical buttoned-up work gear. it was a jeff conaway i certainly hadn't seen before on this series; he was possibly coherent for the first time in two hours of viewing. this made me fabricate a bittersweet scene in my head, where a twenty-years-younger jeff and his boy tony danza would go to the gym together and then, you know, maybe sit down and drink a protein shake together as a little iron-pumping chill-out. couldn't you just see those two happily complimenting each others appearance, over and over and over? my suggesting to conaway, then...i'm not sure what recovery camp dr. drew subscribes to, but if he is, indeed, a 12-stepper, then he is familiar with the whole idea of replacing one addiction with another. if this is the case, i say, let the placebo be danza. danza!

RIP renfro

so brad renfro's death on tuesday -- undoubtedly drug-related -- is totally bumming me out. to me, he will perhaps always stand out as one of the more fucked up celebrities. pretty much all of his recent roles, in fact, required him to play characters not unlike himself. he took the helm, along with ethan embry, of one of my all-time fave episodes of law and order: criminal intent. he played a psychotic, bullied, airport security worker who moonlighted as a comic book artist and serial killer/rapist. dude was a good actor, don't get me wrong, but even through the efficient melodrama of CI it was play to see that his turmoil was real. ahhh, renfro, remember that time you and a buddy got drunk and stole a yacht? the time you got caught copping heroin on skid row? i'm not trying to glamorize a life that ended tragically young, but seriously, the obsession with celebrities-gone-bad has some misplaced attention on the women of the industry. renfro's antics always earned media attention, sure, but in a kind of one-sentence-in-the-newspaper kind of way.

in light of a new show to watch -- celebrity rehab with dr. drew -- i've been giving some thought to the crisis state of drug abuse in the entertainment industry. while on one hand it makes perfect sense to me that certain creative types might be drawn to experimentation, regular use, etc etc, and these routines, coupled with money and access, make addiction almost a sure thing...i still can't help but think that most of these people are just bullshitters with little incentive to exercise self-control. hey assholes -- ever hear my man bruce springsteen? 'they say you gotta stay hungry'? anyway, celebrity rehab: so one of the guests is alec baldwin, and he's been sober for over a year now, and while i DO understand that recovery is a long process, and i DO respect the fact that this man has a long and well-documented history of definite abuse, and i DO get that just because someone is sober does not necessarily mean that they're thinking like a sober person dry drunk syndrome etc), i CANNOT respect his decision to enter rehab where he knows he is going to be placed in close quarters with crazytown frontman SHIFTY SHELLSHOCK.

shifty shellshock may very well be the walking, talking embodiment of cocaine. everything about him screams 'awful choices' rather than 'let's do a few bumps and party our asses off'. the mohawk that has little regard for his receding hairline? tattoos that rival only travis barker in their late-90's iconography? the fact that he chose 'shifty shellshock' for a name? baldwin, you're fucked. if you really feel the need to enter rehab a year after sobriety -- if that's how insecure you currently feel in your own recovery -- mark my words, by the end of this program's 'season', you will be smoking rocks in some hidden nook of the pasadena recovery center with a man who looks like 1997 took a huge, leathery, nu-rap dump into a pair of jnco's.

i won't waste your time with more personal attacks on this show's participants because i do truly believe that at least a few of 'em could benefit from some sort of treatment. like jeff conaway, who seriously almost scared me straightedge last week. ugh, chills. anyway, it's just a shame that renfro's just pretty much been a side note since he peaked at age 14 or whatever. i guess the injustice of the horrible things that we do to ourselves is sinking in, when i think about how i can never look forward to another renfro episode of law and order (you know dick wolf loves to recycle those character actors), yet i WILL have to tolerate the release of another crazytown album. in conclusion, kids, for the sake of renfro stay off of heroin. and if you think you might have the desire and motivation to pen lyrics such as 'come and dance with me, the smartest thing you ever did was take a chance with me' and cover your body like head to fucking toe with sick tribes...stay off coke.

weekend viewing

predator 2: last week i was in chicago for an archaeology conference, which was pretty awesome. the first night i was in town, i sat down at a random table of archaeologists and found one to be familiar. turns out we had a latin class together like five years ago, and i'm still impressed that i remembered him because that 8 am course, taken during my final semester of college, was embarrassingly punctuated by many a trip to the bathroom to puke as i was kind of in a party zone. anyway, this former classmate of mine reminded me of a sight that i rather enjoyed while i was an undergdrad. there was this girl, i never spoke to her, never knew her name, but she was awesome becuase her hairstyle can only be described as predator dreads.

so, yeah, yesterday i saw this was coming on so i watched it. for little more than the above association. i really don't have anything new to add to predator thought, i guess. danny glover danny glover danny glover.

squirm: this 1976 flick is AMAZING. big-city dude goes to visit his girlfriend in her sleep southern town, only to find that the whole place is infested with carniverous worms. this movie was clearly a huge influence for the decade-later bigger budget kevin bacon vehicle TREMORS; and i love me some tremors. anything that helped that movie get born is deserving of my love. it also lent quite a bit to arachnaphobia; lots of foul shower scenes. and a classic 'hick' who the worms cannot take down, but they do gnaw through his face, and when he rises up to 'get' people like a still-living zombie, the only thing he'd say is 'now YOU gonna be a worm-face!' i mean this had potential to be at least mildly, mildly disturbing but someone decided that, nope, that was not to be the tone of squirm. kudos. like, for real.

2008 should be epic...

...and this is how i know. when i awoke and turned on the tv, the first thing that came on was indeed terminator 2 and it had just started. immediately after that i realized that my thesis show is not even two months away, so this means some 'limits' being put in place. until now, grad school was, among other things, a pretty good justification for what most might call low-grade functional alcoholism. not so anymore! until this shit goes up on FEBRUARY 26, i will be largely laying low. today i broke it to my grad-school drinking pal that this was the case. he was crushed, of course -- who wouldn't be, i'm fun as shit -- but what can ya do. anyhow, yeah, thesis show coming up. i will be posting various deets of this as it approaches. come and buy my shit!