Pearl Harbor is really bad

"Pearl Harbor" was not as bad as I thought it would be, it was worst. I think it was the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a movie, not because the dialog was bad and full of cliches, not because the love story overwhelmed what the movie was supposed to be about, not because that love story was a superficial love triangle that insulted the intelligence, and not because the story was so superficially neat and perfect, celebrating good-looking swashbuckling heroes that survive rather than the ordinary sailors and soldiers that died -- no, not because of these very good reasons to despise the film, I think it's the worst because it wants you to believe it and take it seriously and it takes three hours to finish which is three hours too long.

I watched a movie I had rented before. The movie is called Bliss. It's about a man who tries to cure his wife's sexual and mental difficulties with sex, a type of therapeutic lovemaking or conscious sex that brings her to a state of bliss. The movie is one of the few movies about sex that treats the subject with thoughtful integrity. Reminded of it, I have to remember to put it on my favorite movies list. It's a beautiful movie, romantic and sad.

My mother has been in a kind of strange mood lately, so I took her out to lunch today. We went to this restaurant she likes called Henry's Landing. We shared an appetizer and an entree, and the waitress serving us had one of the most exquisite and erotic smiles my eyes have ever witnessed. When she smiled I nearly jumped out of my skin. She was married of course, or maybe the ring was an anti-man repellent, but regardless it drove me mad with desire and that sadness that marks an encounter with unattainable beauty, a beauty that even if one possessed it, and one wouldn't want to for fear of losing it, it still would not be enough, would not be close enough, because the flesh always separates the soul from pure beauty.

I finished Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara.

Sixers Win

They are finally showing the sixers on television. It was the seventh game of the series with Milwaukee yesterday, and what an awesome game. Philadelphia won. Now they have to somehow find a way to defeat Los Angeles, a team that has looked unbeatable. It promises to be quite a show. If Milwaukee had defeated the Sixers, I don't think they would have had much of a chance to beat the Lakers, but the Sixers have the defense and the rebounding to keep it close. The series starts Wednesday at 6 p.m., so I'm going to try to get a couple of friends over to watch it. Wish me luck. Earl's very married. And Devon's wife just gave birth to a baby girl, Isabella.

I'm supposed to go to "Pearl Harbor" tonight, and I loath to go, knowing somewhat what to expect: vapid triteness and good actors embarrassing themselves with melodrama of such galactically hysterical proportions that it makes vaudeville look like serious art. I mean, Alex Baldwin is an accomplished actor, so why would he agree to do this movie. Cuba Gooding, I can understand. But is this the same Alex Baldwin who does such a good job in Glenn Garry Glenn Ross? Now I have to sit through three hours of mind numbing drivel.

I just came back from my first visit to the new library. It's large so it seems very sparse. That word, "very," creeps into my sentences all the time. It's a pointless word. Either the place appears sparse or not, adding "very" doesn't help me visualize it any better. I took out a couple of books, of course -- Numbers in the Dark by Italo Calvino; and Steering the Craft by Ursula le Guin, about writing. I like to read books about writing, they inspire me for some reason, almost like an injection of amphetamines straight into the cerebral mainline. The jazz. But it's an artificial tonic. What I need to do is develop my own music, my own momentum and rhythmic swing, pushing higher and higher until it cranks over three hundred and sixty and keeps cranking over like the camshaft of an engine, the momentum doing much of the work. One gets that from actual writing, the story builds its own momentum but it's hard to begin and even harder to keep dutifully attentive to what you are being asked to write.

They had some books for sale. I picked up The Outsider aka The Stranger by Albert Camus for 30 cents. I thought at the time I might read it again, but now I'm not so sure.

Ghost Dog

In my saturnine stupor yesterday, I almost ruined my page by mistakenly saving a blank page over my hypertext. That would have sucked.

I received in the mail a book I ordered a couple of weeks ago. The book's called Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai. A movie I recently watched, "Ghost Dog," involves a contract killer who thought of himself as a samurai warrior in the traditional sense. Sections of the "Hagakure" are read aloud throughout the film almost as a running commentary on the action. Having always been interested in oriental culture and philosophy, I was intrigued and I ordered the book from the largest used bookstore in the world, Powells Bookstore in Portland (for their website, just add a .com to their name). I ordered it delivered surface mail (the cheapest) so I was surprised to see it arrive so soon. Now all I have to do is find time to read it.

Collecting Easton Press

I am considering updating my video rental page. A daunting task. I was down in Bellingham last week bookshoping, and with the money I received from my aunt in California for my birthday (April 1), I picked up a couple of leather Easton Press books — The Decameron by Boccaccio; The Tale of Two Cities by Dickens. I adore beautiful books, the look and feel of them. I also found a couple of books I had been looking for, the aforementioned The Book of Embraces and The Horseman On The Roof by Jean Giono. I also bought Jazz by Toni Morrison.

A nasty tempest yesterday and scintillating weather today. Writing briefly about fantasy literature yesterday stirred my desire to read some and possibly write some (I must must must begin working on my novel's second draft), so I hunted down Terry Brooks' The Sword of Shannara and began to read it. It's a little cliche and the prose is quite simple but his use of active verbs and dynamic description both make the narrative move smoothly. His action scenes are particularly smooth which draws the reader in by being almost invisible. A net friend sent me the Webster Dictionary on CD, but it won't load properly.

Am I the only one who cannot stand the Los Angeles Lakers? Get this, I could not find one channel that carried the Philadelphia/Milwaukee basketball games so far. It's the NBA semifinals for crying out loud. I could not believe it. Go Sixers.

Reading | The Evils of Christianity

I updated my reading page with some of the titles of books I've been reading the last couple of months. It's a rather eclectic list, I'm afraid. But if anyone has any questions about them, please do not hesitate to ask since books are a large part of my life, an important part.

I've always been a strong fantasy literature enthusiast ever since I was old enough to understand Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and other similarly fantastic stories. I remember devouring Howard's Conan the Barbarian books and the other authors that kept the character alive, notably Sprague de Camp who had a beautiful way of describing violent settings and characters. Then I fell in love with Tolkien and CS Lewis and the John Carter of Mars books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. So when Terry Brooks comes out with a new novel, I usually read it.

The Le Carre book was an experiment, my dad admires him and I wanted to see what was the big deal. I still don't know.

And you're probably thinking, "three Stephen King novels?" -- well, I think he's a pretty good writer but beyond that he is one of the few authors that can really make me laugh. I appreciate that. Maybe I relax more reading his work, and it makes me more receptive to humor, I'm not sure.

My browser, Netscape, does not seem to want to translate the two spaces I place after each sentence, so I apologize for the density of text. I'll keep trying to change it. It's probably one of those bobby traps set by the Microsofts of the world designed to make you use their hypertext editors.

This friend of mine and I went out to a coffeehouse today. First, we went to the video store, because I wanted to rent a couple of movies for the coming week (the weather is miserable today). I rented the following -- "The Big Kahuna," "The Cradle Will Rock," and "Deuce Bigalowe: Male Gigolo." I know, I know, it's shameless.

At the coffeehouse, my friend started to rant about all the evils Christianity and religion have provoked over the years. I'm not sure if I incited her or what, but it took me aback. Like slow down and chill, it's not Jesus' fault psychotic people over the years have found in religion and its misinterpretation a handy excuse to kill, rape and pillage. The "good news" in the new testament is that love saves and has saved. Anyway, I didn't know what to say. Gentleness will penetrate the hardest substance, as the ancient Chinese proverb goes.

I'm in a baseball fantasy pool (Yahoo) this year. Earl talked me into it. Ironically I began the season not knowing anything about the game, and frankly finding the game quite boring. But after just a couple of months, I have become fairly knowledgeable, and I have been in first place in the pool almost from the beginning. I was in a basketball fantasy pool last year, and I ended up in next-to-last place, just above Earl. It was a pathetic showing certainly, but next year will be different.

Now, of course, I like baseball.

Last Temptation of Christ

I'm going to try doing it by hand. I'm not enamored with hypertext, but I feel compelled to keep my journal going. Several visitors have come by and emailed. Not to mention the self-expression factor. Writing about myself, people, and ideas I care about always feels good, like settling down into a big chair in front of a fire with a good novel you're dying to read, like getting into a zone during a basketball game.

A lot has happened and not happened in the last few months. I of course finished the course, the philosophy of mind, my last entry talks about. I ended up with an A, quite unexpectedly, but pleasantly received. With that, I graduated with my Bachelor in English Literature. This spring I've done quite a bit of tutoring in writing and literature comprehension. I started to rewrite my fantasy novel with a new angle in mind. I've read about 10 or more books, not including the continuation of my mission to read all of Shakespeare's plays -- I've completed the Histories and Comedies, and I'm now halfway through the Tragedies (starting Hamlet) -- and also not including poetry and short stories. I've rented and have gone to see a plethora of movies. I was severely sick the last two weeks of March and most of April with a bladder infection (see the movie "The Green Mile" for a visual of what that feels like) which was at first mis- diagnosed and mis- prescribed. I'm fine now. And I've handwritten about 7 or more long letters, which to be honest has been my principal form of self-expression the last few months, for even my personal journal has suffered abandonment.

I had a dream the other day that I hadn't thought about until I was just outside reading The Book of Embraces by Eduardo Galeano, an enchanting book comprised of a different prose poem on each page accompanied with an illustration. The book was indirectly recommended by a friend of mine, Graeme, who lives in Chicago and with whom I correspond regularly. Anyway -- the dream. I should contextualize it by saying that in the last month I've twice seen a coyote run past my window when I've been on my computer and that coyotes are common around this area despite its suburban location mainly because the yards are still quite large, mostly one or two acres.

The dream starts with me going out the open front door in my wheelchair (making this dream already notable since I usually am not in wheelchair in my dreams). Outside the front, I look across our large, green front yard and see a huge coyote, so big and so rough looking, I thought, in the dream, that it had to be prehistoric. As soon as I saw it, it looked at me and stared. It crouched slightly then began to bound across the yard towards me. My father appeared at the doorway and saw the coyote running towards me and then ran back inside. I remember thinking that he wasn't abandoning me. He was getting help. But I wasn't sure about my assertion. I had seen his face, and it had registered terror and cowardice. I turned back to the coyote. Then it lunged with its paws outstretched and teeth bared. I close my eyes and lifted my arm to defend myself, but the coyote mis- judged the leap and it jumped over me. As it passed over, my arm hit its hind legs and I heard it yelp. I turned around and saw it stop, turn around, and leap at me again. I knew it was going to kill me, and I wondered, just before its teeth sunk into my neck, if my father was coming to help me or not. I woke up immediately, I think.

It was a very strange dream. Very Native Indian, I suppose. The coyote plays a principal role in their mythology. I wonder if dreams are just dreams, or if they are a product of our subconscious desires and fears, or if they are a message from beyond the invisible bubble that envelops our reality. But supposedly we dream several times a night. I don't think each could be a message. I don't know, it's a mystery, as Mr. Henslowe says so appropriately in the movie "Shakespeare in Love".

I finished a book yesterday. The Last Temptation of Christ by Kazantzakis touched me deeply as it engaged in many of the ideas that I struggle with in my journey towards death, ideas like the reconciliation between the terrifying God of justice one sees in the Old Testament and the God of gentleness and mercy one sees and Christ. The book is very expressive in the literal and esthetic sense of that word, and in the characters and their intense striving, I can see how Kazantzakis' study of Russian literature and existential philosophy influenced his fictional writing. The physical book itself has some history. My late grandfather read the book decades ago, and when he died, my father inherited several of the books that were in decent enough condition to keep. I can just see my grandfather reading this book, arguing, as I did, with the ideas it puts forward, struggling with the tension between the historical and the fictional, laughing at the expressive humor and humanity of the too human disciples and apostles so similar to himself, and feeling the tenderness and melancholy of sacrifice and the inability of humanity to shed its earthy cloak and flower without light. Yes, reading the same book that he did made me think of him, and this morning, after church, my father and I took our traditional drive down to the coffeehouse, and while we were there I brought the conversation around to his father. We talked about the different families. I could see my sadness in his eyes. I wish he was still around.