“First, to foster lively and interesting streets. Second, to make the fabric of these streets as continuous a network as possible throughout a district of potential sub-city size and power. Third, to use parks and squares and public buildings as part of this street fabric; use them to intensify and knit together the fabric’s complexity and multiple use. Fourth, to emphasize the functional identity of areas large enough to work as districts … Nothing is more helpless than a city street alone, when its problems exceed its powers.”
Good Pictures/Bad Camera: Odds and Sods
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Film Capsule: The Avengers
Go see The Avengers. It’s light, and silly, and it doesn’t get bogged down with details. Scarlett Johansson looks hot, Robert Downey, Jr. is superb, and Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk is good enough that it may actually merit yet-another reboot of that franchise (Keep an eye out for one scene, in particular, during which Loki, the super-evil bad guy, does for the Incredible Hulk what the Cairo Swordsmen did for Indy).
How can you go wrong, right?
But wait! there’s more … including the final big-screen trailers for The Amazing Spider Man and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as a climactic battle for all of mankind on the war-torn streets of midtown Manhattan, just like Superman II.
Anyway, forget about the fact that Captain America was weak, both Hulks and Thor were just OK, and Iron Man 2 basically mailed the whole thing in. The Avengers does more than compensate for all of that, and it also promises to move the story forward somewhere around the Summer of 2015.
The End.
Peggy Noonan on the Failure of Journalism (10/26/01)
“When the editors and publishers of our great magazines and networks want you to worry about something – child safety seats, the impact of air bags, drunken driving, insecticides on apples – they know how to make you worry. They know exactly how to capture your attention. Mathew Shephard and hate crimes, Rodney King and racism: The networks and great newspapers know how to hit Drive and go from zero to the American consciousness in 60 seconds. And the networks can do it on free airwaves, a gift from our government. Did the networks and great newspapers make us worry about what we knew we should be worried about? No. Did they bang the drums? No. Did they hit the right story like they know
how to hit a story? No.”
Good Pictures/Bad Camera: Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey
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Moving On: In the Cold, Cold Night
I am alone now, and I am shivering, mangled beyond all recognition in the 
rear pew of St. Ann’s Catholic Church. It is late now, well past 4 am, and all that’s left along the strand is a pale and wanton cast of zombies, spilling out into the night as Holly Beach marquees go dark. This is what Scottish warlocks refer to as the Devil’s Pocket – a vacuum-black void that exists between pitch dark and dawn. The Devil’s Pocket is no time to go wandering dead-end streets alone, that is unless you happen to be carrying a gun, or a badge, or both, and you have absolutely no qualms about brandishing either one.
Down along the east end of Cresse, local authorities are just now beginning to investigate the sudden disappearance of a Canadian transvestite named Rene Ouellet. Rene was last seen wandering toward the beach with an unidentified male right around this hour of the night. Less than a week prior to Rene’s disappearance, a recent high school graduate by the name of Steven Freeman had been arrested and charged with the fatal stabbing of a classmate outside a North Wildwood hotel along the corner of 11th and Surf Avenue.
Two summers before that on Memorial Day weekend, the half-naked body of a 20-year old named Susan Negersmith had been found beaten and bloody behind a dumpster outside Schellenger’s Restaurant. Negersmith’s body had been discovered by two busboys, her T-shirt and bra had been pushed up around her neck, her jeans and underwear had been bunched up around one foot. There were 26 areas of trauma on Susan Negersmith’s body, including vaginal bruising and the presence of semen.
At the time, the Cape May County Coroner’s Office tried to pass off Susan’s death as nothing more than routine alcohol poisoning. That is until the state police, the FBI, and a forensic pathologist by the name of Michael Baden simultaneously descended on the area, declaring the entire investigation (or general lack thereof) an obscene miscarriage of justice. Those sources concluded, much like any other sane, uncompromising human being might, that Susan Negersmith had been raped, and then strangled, and then left to die upon a filthy piece of cardboard. “It would seem to me you could not rule it any other way,” State Police Superintendent Justin Dintino had been later quoted as saying.
In the blazing shitstorm that ensued, Mary Ann Clayton, a state medical examiner who had assisted in Susan Negersmith’s initial autopsy, admitted a “grievous error” had been made, and offered to amend the official cause of death. Clayton was overruled by her superiors, many of whom insisted upon sticking to their story. This despite the fact there was still an unrepentant rapist/murderer left wandering the streets.
All of this kept swimming around in my head as I ducked into the bowels of a catholic church at 4 o’clock in the morning. I was drunk, and severely stoned, and I was more than a little bit afraid. More to the point, I had no idea how I had gotten there. I mean, I knew where I was. And I knew that I had wandered in there, and that the door had been unlocked. I simply could not stitch together how I had gone from smoking hash in someone’s attic to staring at a row of votive candles during the middle of the night.
***
I was seeing the world through kaleidoscope eyes now, an array of dancing prisms set adrift in my periphery. The votive candles were fucking with my vision something wicked; I could see the stained-glass glow of blinking traffic signals along the altar. I could hear the rhythmic purr of dual exhaust and static pounding … a pair of ghetto dragsters battling hard along Atlantic. The screeching tires set me reeling, reeling forward past the altar, past the candles and the stained glass, past the streetlights and the shivering, past it all until I reappeared inside the bare-bones attic of some beach house, smoking pot out of a bong that may or may not be nicknamed Sue.
I hold that bong down at an angle, much like a mortar or an alpine horn. The skunk weed sets me spinning, the hashish sets my mind afloat … afloat and confused, like some cosmic whirling dervish. I am lost now, doggy-paddling, set adrift a thousand miles at sea. I will myself toward the shore, battling currents and black ripples, battling eddies and fierce winds, battling my way beneath the surface … battling deep, deep down into the nether until I find myself right back again, inside the vast and empty confines of a church past 4 am.
I slip out of the church through a side door. I wander down along East Maple. I take a seat upon the front steps of a house where I once lived. An unmarked cruiser stops in front of me, a plain-clothes officer asks, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m just on my way home,” I somehow manage to tell the officer.
“Home where?” the officer asks.
“Home here,” I say, without hesitation. “I live up on the second floor.”
The officer glances upward, considers whether to call me on my bullshit.
“In that case, get upstairs,” he says. “You don’t want to be out here by yourself this time of night.”
I stand up, and then nod. I climb upstairs toward the door. I disappear into the shadows, pulling curtains close behind me. I stand there, still and silent in the hallway of that beach house. I hold my breath and shut my eyes. I pray to god no tenant sees me.
I creep toward the window, making sure the coast is clear. Then I dart back down the steps and high-tail it to the beach. It is light now, nearly dawn, and the sun will soon be breaking coast. It’s time for me to get back home. It’s time for me to get some sleep.
Day 135
©Copyright Bob Hill
Review: Lissy Trullie @ The Mercury Lounge, 4/25
Last night, Lissy Trullie arrived at the Mercury Lounge for what should have been a triumphant return. Trullie played a similar, well-publicized CD pre-lease show at the Mercury way back in early February, 2009. That show felt more like a coronation than a celebration – fans packed rafter-deep, media types from The Times, The Voice, The New Yorker and beyond all bandying about. There were even a handful of celebrities on-hand to ratchet up the “it” factor.
But that was then, as they say. And this, well, this is now.
All of which might explain why Trullie’s hour-long set last night seemed to lack the crucial energy that made that 2009 show such a hit. I mean, sure, the room had its fair share of critics and fans. But the mood seemed deflated, the crowd seemed subdued, and – more often than not – the applause felt almost forced. National reporters were replaced by a room full of bloggers, many of whom appeared worlds more consumed with shooting grainy cell-phone vids than they did about critiquing, or perhaps even enjoying, Trullie’s set. There was very little fanfare for – and even less recognition of – the half a dozen or so selections from Trullie’s brand-new, self-titled LP.
What the audience clamored for instead was anything and everything from Trullie’s critically-acclaimed 2009 EP, Self-Taught Learner.
Obligatory bursts of nostalgia were few and far between, however, and what filled the gaping voids was very often either silence or the synth-pop sound of Trullie laboring to put her new material over. Lissy’s onstage presence is still remarkable, as is the way she wraps those bony fingers round her Fender, staring out across the room from behind medallion eyes. Yet, the set still ended with a spare, almost non-existent round of applause, immediately followed by Trullie making her way, alone and off-kilter, past a handful of well-wishers, en route to her dressing room … a feat she accomplished rather easily, given the fact most of her initial audience had already disappeared into the night.
Film Capsule: The Broken Tower
Wait. What’s that you say? James Franco wrote, directed and starred in a full-length feature film for his NYU thesis project, and it’s premiering this weekend at the IFC Center?
Why, yes, of course James Franco wrote, directed and starred in a full-length feature film for his NYU thesis project, and it’s premiering this coming weekend at the IFC Center downtown.
I mean, how could it not be, really?
This is James Franco, after all – the budding young provocateur who wants so ardently for people to recognize him as a renaissance man that he’s willing to turn his entire career into one long, rambling performance art project. This is a guy who figures if he tethers himself to enough beatnik poets and esteemed liberal arts programs, the public will inevitably have to consider him brilliant by association. This is a guy who – perhaps to his credit – refuses to rest on the laurels of an Oscar-caliber acting career, instead taking significant detours into long-form fiction, poetry, music, and teaching along the way.
And the unfortunate thing about it is, with the exception of being an absolutely superb actor, just about everything else James Franco tries his hand at is mediocre at best. As a fan, you kind of want to cheer the guy on … give him his due for bucking the system and trying his hand at several worthwhile pursuits that may not come so easily.
As a critic, you’re in the unfortunate position of leveling with your readers – a sentiment that is particularly relevant in the case of The Broken Tower, a two-hour film about a little-known American poet who travels the world on his father’s dime, while doing very little else in between. Continue reading
Abe Lincoln on the Importance of Following Your Passion
“Every man is proud of what he does well, and no man is proud of what he does not do well. With the former, his heart is in his work, and he will do twice as much of it with less fatigue. The latter performs a little imperfectly, looks at it in disgust, turns from it, and imagines himself exceedingly tired. The little he has done, comes to nothing, for want of finishing. The man who produces a good, full crop will scarcely ever let any part of it go to waste. He will keep up the enclosure about it, and allow neither man nor beast to trespass upon it. He will gather it in due season and store it in perfect security. Thus, he labors with satisfaction, and saves himself the whole fruit of his labor. The other, starting with no purpose for a full crop, labors less, and with less satisfaction. He allows his fences to fall, and cattle to trespass.
He gathers not in due season.”
Good Pictures/Bad Camera: West Village Morning
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