Covert Ruminations

if a blog fell in the forest picking mushrooms

howdy, whomever. no responses save celeste to the last blog post, perhaps i should send out an email. anyway, no real new news, except that everybody should try to see the movie "3:10 to yuma." best western i've seen in a long time, & one of the few that has any sort of real character development. i was literally blown away. has a lot to say about morality in the face of necessity, not to mention the value of money & of course the old western stand-by, always interesting to me, the concern with one's legacy, with what people are going to say about you when you are gone.

wrote  a poem today, just a dasher, was trying to write some stuff about the moon for the covert-felton studios upcoming production, & ended up with this poem in its stead:

a night-time western [2008]

hung, held hostage over
nothing, a full moon sits
in the balance, like the palm
of the hand testing for
the strength of the rain.

honestly, do you believe
the moon was ever blue?
do you believe that it could
have come to this? over nothing,
you said, forsaking
even a dead body as the last thing.

the brakeman listened,
when we held hands on the
back of the train, the moon full
& bright behind those
camouflaging clouds.

almost a shadow play on the
rails, our embrace recorded
in like-sized gravel like an
old kinetoscope, our love
like a breakthrough of science.

then the drought, your palms
held out, dry with glue; no mending
this rift, the surgeon whispered
at you, swiftly & with intention.
the rain kept holding, out for the
long haul, straight through the night,
driving up & through the haze.

& once we could look back, recall
the days & ways of the past with
memory as padding, only then
does the moon look full,
as if it had been hung.

the end. lemme know if you even get it.

peace,
covert

hello, blog-world: i've been on vacation in reality!

howdy folks. time to start posting again. i know it's been forever, but i have been really down lately, & i don't really know what the cause is, but last year when this happened i started trying to play the guitar, & that seemed to help. this year, me & felton are going to try to make a movie (or nine -- we can make nine before we die, right? cat people.)

honestly, a strange confluence of events has caused me to try to re-invigorate my interest in film-making. first off, i saw "no country for old men" & realized that film is NOT lost in this country. it may be the best movie i've ever seen when it came out (apocalypse now i missed, because i was seven, but i remember my parents returning home from the Thruway Shopping Center "Multiplex" [TWO screens = multi in 1979], but i saw "redux" in the theatre, still not the same). anybody out there notice that there was no music in the entire film that didn't come from a source within the film itself? anybody else notice that those coens filmed a movie that was set in 1980 that is more currently relevant than anything else i've seen in a long time? only in the novels of thomas pynchon (& yes, cormac mccarthy) have i seen someone take on so many grand-level issues: generational interplay, the place of violence in society (which i know everyone is sick of, thanks to the kids that watched tarantino & then went to grad skool, but wait'll you see what joel & ethan have to say about it), constructed morality vs. inherent morality (can't find my kant or nietzsche right now), not to mention post-modernism & the death of capitalism, for what kills capitalism faster than having the proletariat come into some money that they never had to work for? or kill for?

then, there is chris marker, who i have already talked about on this blog once. david & i are going to try to make a short movie, an homage to any number of things, but specifically to marker's film "sans soleil," which really is the most amazing film i've ever laid eyes on (ask felton, he works at the regulator & loves visitors -- ask him how he feels about various duke university literature professors whose last name start with "L"). so, we were gonna make a movie about pool (work what you know, yes?), but then i came up with a title -- "avec la lune" -- & called felton at 4 am with the good news that our project had shifted. now, we also want to have pool in the film, but we also want to create a bit of an homage to durham itself (land of the beautiful people, neh?). the themes i've always wanted to work with are time, identity, memory; the interplay of the self with the ubiquitous Other (or others, in the case of society); the inexorable jack-boot in the face of common humanity, courtesy of "The State;" & of course always the little man against insurmountable odds. sometimes those odds come from inside, sometimes not.

david & i really have no plan, as of yet; the idea is to let the ideas flesh themselves out as we use each other as stimuli to get something done. if anybody is interested in helping out, especially if they would like to portray a pool player in a short film, please let one of us know. hopefully, this blog will become a place where i can try to bring some things up & get some external opinions. maybe we could even post bits on youtube as we film.

anyway, hope everyone is having a fucking ridiculous new year. anybody else realize that the student revolutions in europe in '68 are gonna be 40 yrs in the past this year? sheesh. there's sure a doc in there somewhere.

and, on one final note, if you want to see a little snippet that sums up some of how i feel about "technology" [did i forget to mention that in my themes list?] then you should go here
in order to see how david lynch feels about the iPhone (courtesy of Dave Felton, again).

happy '08, folks. . . only one more year of a quasi-fascist megalomaniac being the figurehead of these fine united states.

The Guns of Alistair MacLean

hey, anybody out there read any alistair maclean? i'm trying to find someone with whom i may chat about some of his books. . . if you have not read any of them, & you like Cold War-type spy novels or cloak-and-dagger mystery type stuff, then he's yer guy (he wrote Guns of Navarone [Clint Eastwood's highest on-screen body count, i think] among other things)

i will be trying to post some new stuff here soon.

geisel from zimmerman

okay, okay, i know i have not posted in forever. sorry. the stumble add-on to mozilla just eats at yer day, i'm thinking about removing it. but it's so fun.

anyway, the thing that forced me to post was a little thing i heard about from dave felton [his blog is here] & finally looked up. somebody -- i honestly can't figure out who or how -- has put out some music called "dylan hears a who." it is, ostensibly, an album of bob dylan recording six dr. seuss bits, opening with "oh the thinks you will think" to the tune of "like a rolling stone" & finishing with a twelve-minute "cat in the hat." it is really unbelievable. the "album" art alone is worth checking out.

einstein, pies, & other nonsense

well, today is einstein's birthday. neat. it also happens to be Pi Day, because the date (in American format) is 3/14. . .

many apologies for not posting, things have been really busy & blog posts just didn't seem like they were a priority. lotta billiards, & of course too much drinking. duh.

anybody wants to play 9-ball for money, bring it on.

will post more later today.

valentine's day redux

well, i know everyone is sick of me posting little quickies with links -- i know, i know, you want the dylan post. okay, okay, i'll work on it, but for now, check out this picture, which is a birthday reference for me. i think you might get a kick out of it.

graphic design 101

these are some really interesting photos. . .

so, if you want a REALLY amazing plug-in for mozilla firefox, then go get the "stumbleupon" thing available here. . . you'll "thank" me later.

amazing video

okay, i never do this, but you absolutely all have GOT to go see this video. . . takes less than 5 minutes, but i promise you it is worth it. it is an interesting "video" explanation of web 2.0

watch out for Liechtenstein! turn left! turn left!

i don't really know how to bring this up, so go here to read the story about how 170 swiss soldiers accidentally wandered into Liechtenstein, which constitutes an "invasion" apparently. i seriously am having a hard time typing this cuz i am laughing so hard. they had no ammunition in their rifles! a training exercise! it's like the cuban missile crisis! lookout for the liechtensteiners, they're gonna take over the world!!

seriously, folks, this is a good night to watch all the late-night talk shows, esp the ones on comedy central. . .

i have a longer bob dylan post that is coming soon, so check back. . .

symbiosis, reversed

i guess reverse symbiosis is really a sort of parasitism. . . but what i am getting at here is that i recommend that you never, never, ever watch "forrest gump" with the sound off whilst listening to the Animals Greatest Hits. Bad Idea.

i never really disliked "forrest gump" -- it doesn't fall into the same category as a "titanic" [side note: i refuse to watch "titanic." period. ever. i don't care about how good it is. to boil it down, 'tis a matter of simple economic mathematics. $200 million for one movie. i don't care how many tickets get sold, that's not the issue: it's the quality of the output. there are so many ways to spend $200 million making movies that it's ridiculous to think about -- how about 20 $10 million movies? how about TWO HUNDRED movies that you can spend a MILLION DOLLARS EACH. if your success rate is 2%, you still have twice as many good movies for the same amount of money as one. i hate rich people, & their power struggle. it's the rich people like scorcese -- who make personal movies like "gangs of new york -- that don't bother me. they have a certain aesthetic, & they stick to it. if it doesn't fit into our view of that person, tough shit. end of side note] but "forrest" is kinda overly schmaltzy for me. this coming from someone who has put "Babe" on more than one top then movies of all time list. but anyway, i'm not much for forrest. i forget now what i was going to compare it to, cuz i went on that titanic rant. oh well.

that's all for this saturday night.