We Change Your Channel

Of all the odd things to have happened during the yearlong presence of BadTV on youtube, perhaps nothing is stranegr than the weird responses we got to our vid on drowning polar bears. In the vid our actress Mia Honeymoon starts to tear up as she performs her lines; it's a genuine and heartfelt show of emotion. We love her for it, and that's why we hired her for the part; she feels.

But the comments on the vid turned out to be viciously nasty. People questioning her sincerity, the lines, just hammering at us. Why? Is the concept of polar bears without ice too difficult to swallow? The apologists for global warming come out in force with their defenses of the status quo, and some of the respondents simply don't give a shit for the animal: Let it drown. Even the hunter, even the hummer driver, even the oil user . . . no compassion for a magnificent animal down on its luck? Whew, sometimes the redneck factor in American can give you a serious pause of discouragement.

But we press on, and will have versions of the vid and its lines on Spanish TV and German TV as well as Mandarin TV, so we're not cowed. More resolute than ever!

A blue truck comes dancing over the dirt path towards us, just as I realize we have made a wrong turn. We are trespassing. It is dark, but I can see the scowl on the driver’s face. He stops five yards away.

“I’m looking for Leroy,” I shout.

He glares back. “You found him just in time, because I was lining up my deer rifle right at your forehead.”

“Frank sent us,” I say, pretending to ignore the introduction.

“I don’t know Frank,” says Leroy. “What do you want?”

Sandie leans out the passenger side and says “Heather sent us, too. We want to spend the night and use your hot tub.”

Leroy rolls his window down all the way, and looks at Sandie. The web has swung in the tides of information; he’s trapped now, so he offers one last threat:

“You can get nekkid and fornicate in my tub, but you can’t come driving at midnight onto my property and not expect a gunblast with no explantion. You’re lucky I held up on the trigger. Because I don’t miss.”

There is a few moments of silence, engines idling, starry sky a-twinkling, and Sandie leans out the window and tells a lie: "Heather says you would never shoot your guests.”

He puts his truck in gear and mutters: “You follow me and put your truck where I tell you to.”

_____________________________________________

The government would never lie to you. Soldiers operate with a code of honor. The murder happening in Iraq is necessary to prevent our Homeland from being blown up by the enemy terrorists.

Why didn't the Pentagon tell us this about a real American hero, football player Pat Tillman:

On July 26, 2007, Chris Matthews reported on "Hardball" that Tillman's death may have been a case of fragging - specifically that the bullet holes were tight and neat, suggesting a shot at close range. Matthews based his speculation on a report from the doctors who investigated Tillman's body. The following day the Associated Press reported that a doctor who examined Tillman's body after his death wrote, "The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described," also noting that the wound entrances appeared as though he had been shot with an M16 rifle from less than 10 yards away.

And at his memorial service, let it be remembered that Pat's younger brother interrupted the soulful proceedings by declaring his bro was "not with god . . . he wasn't religious." 

I am glad you supported my claim that a movie made in the U.S. in Romanian would be a big deal in Romania. The trick is to make it a very American movie. Not the big Hollywood dinosaur, but with the attitude that infects everything from iPods to Target to Virgin Mobile to NBA basketball to the endless sweeping deserts and mountains of the southwest. I would actually model the movie on two Danish films: The Celebration and The Inheritance. The movie would have to have the ultimate forward-thinking story, but done in such a way that every person in Romania would instantly recognize that, Hey, this is me in America.

Mikey K., our neighborhood assassin of oil execs, is applying lipstick in the mirror of a bathroom. The camera lurks around her.

“You’re doing this so you can remember me, right?” she asks.

She turns around to face the camera,  a neutral expression on her face.

“Here, look at me the way you want to see me, or how you want me to be seen, so you can remember what I say. You ready, Sean?”

She has her hands on her hips and doesn’t care that she is nude. She looks invulnerable to me. Is this how she wants to be seen?

“What happens if a rock bumps into Earth
next Tuesday
and the dust stays in the sky
until somebody a billion years from now
finds a coffeecup from Starbucks
and a cash register
from the Banana Republic,
but the only tree they see is turned to stone?”

Mikey K. touches my camera lens with a finger.

“Who imagines a flower in the breeze,
who smells my pollen,
who feels my wind kiss their cheek?
Who imagines these things,
when the world is nothing
but stone trees and trash from Starbucks
and cash registers from the Banana Republic?”

We shoot this tomorrow, in the Hollywood Hills. One of five scenes in a project following Peter's advice: "Why not throw in a plot instead of all the philosophical bullshit, even if the philosophy is important and cool? How about a little XYZ? You guys can do it. Your lives are a drama, why not make your comedy the same?" Yeah, a little plotting in the pathos. We can do it.

Fly from Manhattan to LAX, about 3000 miles on the ground and 2400 on your frequent flyer miles. But travel will always be different for BadTV from now on: Offset your carbon footprint. Now we buy off our guilt by counting up the energy we consume and making a direct correction somewhere on the planet. There are several options, but we'll go with Conservation International coz they were good to us when we were drowning as Betapunks and Ecomedia a decade ago. We log in, let them know how we just scarred the planet, and then buy our way into a bandaid by contributing a tree or a bush or a piece of land to nature. Do it. You'll feel better already. (Our RT flights Manhattan to Los Angeles pushed 1.5 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and Conservation International will undo the damage -- in theory, longtime -- for a $15 contribution.)

I wear the pink faux crocs from Target ($9.99) into the airport and somebody stops me at security and says, "You must be flying to Hollywood," and I say, No, you fall into Hollywood. Like a star.  "Say Hello to Paris," says Security, and on utoob later that night I watch a spoof of Paris going to jail and Sandie Black laughs while she holds onto Jake who is getting too old for the stairs. The editing system blinks invitingly, and I am struck suddenly by wanting to do something about jealousy. Again. Where is the video of Ananda getting her butt massaged in Florida, and what do I want to say about it? I've already written the words: And for the record, I am quite sure my eros star has faded from your sky, and I accept this as much as I lament it, so I am encouraging you to do what you need to however you need to because you are perhaps the principal personality of my life, certainly the most erotic element of it, and I wish you pleasure and knowledge the same way I would hope you wish it for me. If I have a secret agenda in pushing you to be you it's simply so I can hang rapturously on the details, to live vicariously through you and re-visit the mysteries and hopes our short fusion inspired. So I can say my advice to you is pure in the sense that I do not wish to benefit directly from it. But I know you, too, and I know what it means to long for relevance and knowledge . . . for fantasy, even, if that's the proper term to use for reality we are reluctant to admit or explore. See? Already written. But not properly used, and time is running out. In the picture, Ashley is startled by my claim that I am slowing down time by doing different things. What? What is this guy talking about? Listen, Ashley, watch Paris sing and ask yourself if you can do this, and if you can't sing like her, and what she does isn't difficult but it's still brilliant, then ask yourself, Why aren't you doing it?

I am pushing you to be you so I can hang onto the rapturous details. Tell me about your skin and its vigorous touch. What are the words to the song I write while I listen to Paris sing? If I were to leave you, there'd be nothing left behind, so I'll stay where I am, and ask you not to leave me. This little stanza is fueled by jealousy and Paris, no question. Because it was in Paris that we made love in the street, in the doorway of a bookstore, and the passersby looked at Ananda's face in a scene straight out of the movies, and smiled. Go go go. 

I'm chatting over crabcakes with Fritz about his dad's boat lying unused in Maine when I make up my mind on the spot to abandon Hollywood. Too much to do. Sandie and Seanie have a meeting that evening about the future of BadTV, and she says, "Fuck the boat, what you gonna make out of a bunch of docks?" She reveals she's been looking at VW buses to make a traveling BadTV editing suite and the next day we get in an RV and feel the thing up and do a little research that night and the NEXT DAY put three grand down on a $66K beauty which will take us around the USofA with a projector and a screen so we can show BadTV on the Bonneville Salt Flats or at the glaciers of north Montana. And we can film stuff, too, like this fabulously brilliant dance piece: Dreaming. Let us know where you are so we can drop by and put you on TV.

Sandie, they got a building in the Imperial City dedicated to the culture of the natives. 'Natives' being the people here before the Chinese and Columbus and the Vikings showed up with their germs and pigs. But in this museum they won't tell you that a judge once asked Crazy Horse which exactly were his lands, and Crazy Horse said: "My lands are where my people lie buried." And then later some buck soldier anxious to make a name for himself stabbed Crazy Horse in the back with his bayonet while he was guarding him and watched him bleed to death. What was that soldier's name? When we get the Badmobile on the road I promise to go to the Black Hills and find out that fucker's name and erect a little scar right here so some of the million visitors can see it. I thought about this in the elevator at the museum for the natives in the Imperial City. Could see Crazy Horse stabbed while he was pressing the button for Open Doors.

Like everything that has to do with Leonard Cohen, the biopic "I Am Your Man" was uneven and shallow. But then there was one song: 

How many times in succession did I watch this piece when I rented the DVD? 24 times? 50 times? Music and emotion can make for such a powerful confluence, and I felt as if my own feelings had joined with Cohen's words and melody to produce Antony. It was as if Antony was a holographic image caused by me listening to that song. That's how personal the experience became. Amazing, amazing performance, 100% devoid of ego or glitter, those constant dangers to music. Here is a human being, stripped down to melody and emotion, improvising, unsure of the words and unsure of himself, and Antony gives us himself the way the music wants him to. Phenomenal. As far away from rock and roll as you can get.

The lovely Antony sings "If It Be Your Will" by Leonard Cohen.

“Thanks for visiting and I’m sorry I coughed, but I remembered your story about the woman who had a stroke in Yellowstone and how you promised you would take her to see the gorillas in the Congo as you held onto her foot. How romantic your story was. But you never finished it. I suspect that she figured out that all you wanted was a cuddle for the rest of your life, and that she went somewhere else to have a baby instead of to be used up by you without any reward. Because at least the baby would be there when it was time to kiss her goodbye. And you, you are never on time. Take care of yourself, and listen to the people who love you.”

Descartes said that wonder declines with age. The older you get, the more mundane every rainbow seems to be. Two nights ago, a coyote dashed across my drive as I walked up the hill to my car. We missed each other by fifteen yards. My heart stopped, but I kept walking, until I realized I had not heard a thing. This 40 or 50-pound animal managed to race up a hill of scrabbly stone and brush, and not emit a peep. Even on the tarmac of the drive my own step was a clumsy crash. I stopped to think how unlikely it would be for any animal to be so quiet. The coyotes feed on the housecats, sometimes, so there are signs all over Laurel Canyon: "Cat Missing." As I was thinking this I saw the owl, perched atop the telephone pole. I'd missed him or her, too. My possessions control me, demand my attention, when I should be out on the wind, beneath the starry sky, listening to nature's symphony, mind full of wonder. But I spend an hour on Craigslist, looking . . . for what? Another twig for my nest? Why?

Why don't you pop down to the nude beach at Zipolite, have fresh fish every day for $4 a plate, fresh fruit smoothies in the morning for $2 a glass, hotel room with door that opens onto a beautiful beach for $25 a night (with fan and mosquito netting), take five difficult books you know you have to read before you die, take a boat ride to look for dolphins, go to the beach at Ventanilla to a) watch ridley turtles lay eggs and b) release baby turtles into the sea after dusk so the seagulls and dogs don't get them, and walk five miles every day on the beach just thinking randomly without any strategies or schemes, and have a margarita at night with your feet in the Pacific, and then after at least 15 days so your body finally knows that you are there and not here, come back and take a look at your project and feel completely stunned at how good and how cool it is. Wouldn't you rather be the parent of a marvelous baby than of the ugly monster which almost killed you during birth?

From "the Burn & the Scar" not dead yet . . . and also part of the book coming from BadTV which Black & Bue have just agreed to produce.

How is it possible that the nation which pretends to lead the world can be so ripped off by a company like Exxon? How much longer will we sit on our asses and let these people dictate how the USA bullies its way through history? Thirty nine billion dollars in profit for 2006, the greatest profit in the history of corporations. Exxon cleared $39 billion last year. And yet the USA is in a struggle to maintain its energy policies and costs and the little guy paid $3 a gallon last summer. The oil companies and their pals in high places are terrorizing Americans. The outrageous details are here.

And while we're at it, let's throw a stone at that convenient fraud Al Gore. This guy is a key member of the good old boy network, and his family has pushed tobacco and crapped up the environment with superfund sites; what a relentless liar and con-man this fool is. Eight years in the White House, and what did he do? Nada, zilch, squataroo. Ask him why he lies so much if you bump into him on his speaking circuit. The sad details are here. 

You sit around on a Saturday night babysitting a video which refuses to shape itself to your intent, and all of a sudden one small impulse turns into a torrent of possibilities: We want to exploit the impending collective consciousness of 'memes.' This is a funny idea, since memes are really collective consciousnesses in the first place. But people don't walk around realizing their thoughts are constantly funneled through a social prism, and become laced with tiny weather-changing influences as clouds become laced with sulfuric acid before dropping a dangerous new rain. Well, ideas form in the clouds above civilization and drip into the individual mind. "What the fuck are you talking about," interrupts Sandie. "Let's get the best domain names and register the sucker and put it up and my vote is for memechannel.com." We register a bevy of meme iterations, and I make private plans to use memehead.com for my own twists of thought. But we also get mightymeme.com, and memezoo.com, which are also potent promo plugs. And what do you know, at Sundance an industry bigwig mentions "memes" and Sandie chips in with her camerawork and blithely claims 'I'm with the Meme Channel," and the exec's eyebrows raise in mild surprise. Give Ms. Black three points for a longshot intellectual boner which hits nothing but net. This babysitting video biz is cool.

This is a piece by Chuck Close hanging in the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I want to write 'God Bless Sierra Leone' across the canvas. Blue sharpie, or dark lavender. I write Mister Wink, the best lawyer in America, that he should defend me if I am caught writing 'God Bless Sierra Leone' in elevators or canvasses around the USA. Since Mister Wink and I are writing a book called "Arguments For Quitting: A Poet's Guide to Law," he has no choice but to represent me. My defense will be that the morality of the country should prevail over destruction of personal property; that in these times of prosperity, with Starbucks full of chai latte and Target overflowing with iPod gizmos, it is only charitable of the society to stop yakking aboout God Blessing America. We're gonna lose, Mister Wink tells me, but you're the one who will be out in the rain scrubbing walls, not me. However, he agrees that the argument should be advanced generally, that lawyers should be forced to consider morality in their enforcement of the law, since they are already considering the compensation which comes with such enforcement. The cool thing about the Chuck Close piece hanging in Minneapolis is that Close made it with fingerprints. He is putting a message of Self onto Other, and I see in this a parallel of Americans concerned for Sierra Leone and Americans asking God to stop killing Pat Tillman and throw a little holy water in a more desolate landscape than the U.S. military camps.

I am in the Excel Inn on I-94 outside Pigseye. It is my birthday. I write a tenant and ask that she pay the rent on time, and I write a lover to tell her that I am still gushing with expression and experiment even if we no longer kiss. I tell her that her memory controls the faucet. The thing must be stuck fully open, because I gush. I am coughing. The couple in Room 205 next door argue about money. It is 40 degrees outside when it should be half that. In my bed there is no lover. Just a bag of salted cashews and a book about the DNA of the coelecanth. Some fish see only in shades of grey and blue. I am not in my bed, since I am here with you. I want to tell you about imagining in three dimensions rather than two. But I will provide a link instead.

Kurt likes a girl in high school whose teachers claimed she was retarded. Kurt didn't think so. The girl was slow, perhaps, but she was sensitive and lovely. Most importantly she felt normal around Kurt. After a month or so of hanging around they end up at her house, with her parents out. Kurt Cobain tells her he wants to look at her without her clothes on, and he watches as she goes to her room and undresses. They pet and pant. He is horrified by the smell of her naked body, and he flees, vowing never again to touch another human being. Her father comes to the high school soon after, screaming bloody murder about his daughter's violation. The father and the principal sit down with the yearbook to identify the daughter's assailant. Kurt Cobain cut the day they took the yearbook photos, so he breathes a sigh of relief. But word gets around the students that Kurt was the boy messing with the slow girl, and then he has to run a gauntlet into school with all his schoolmates shouting, "Retard-fucker!" and that night he goes up to the train tracks to end his life. He lies down on the tracks and covers his body with a few concrete blocks so he won't jump when the train comes. The 11:00 to Tacoma rumbles onto the track, and Kurt Cobain closes his eyes and waits to be ripped into pieces. But the train passes harmlessly by on an adjoining track. Kurt removes the rocks and goes home, humiliated.

Must make this true story into a video. 

Exterior. Deck
Mikey Moore is standing on a balcony, blissfully listening to music. She is unaware of a camera watching her from within a studio. With her eyes closed, she taps the banister of the deck and looks out into the canyon. She keeps listening to her music until the camera has approached inches from her face. She notices the camera and smiles, and then whispers:

You always talk about Venus. But which Venus are you referring to? The naked redhead standing on an oyster shell? Or the planet, full of volcanoes and hurricanes?

You kiss the redhead, get her to fall in love with you, you’re in hell. And if you land on the actual planet, you’re definitely in hell.

This image will soon be available as a magnet for your icebox.

Couple eat chicken at gothic farm. Long table. Big silver platter. Sandie in black dress with garlands in her hair. Matt is reviewing papers; mutters occasionally about "good deals" or "they're rippig you off." He's a lawyer repping her. He does not eat. They go outside to a decrepit tennis court, and find flat tires on their car. Cellphones don't work. They walk around the pool calling on cellphones to no avail. Sandie says "Let's hitch a ride."

Next shot, they're walking Virginia's autmun glory. She is ill. He is concerned. They stop at a bus stop, where she begins to vomit. She vomits on his shoe, he grimaces but is concerned. Car pulls up. Bald stranger walks over to the bus stop and politely says: "I need money, please." Matt scoffs. Stranger more insistent. Matt taken aback: "How much do you need," and stranger rplies "Everything you got." Matt snorts and stranger suddenly pulls out a syringe. He threatens Matt, who pulls out his wallet. Stranger drives away. Matt sits at the bus stop as Sandie continues to vomit.