Distractions.

There are so many beautiful women in the world. How do you settle on one choice? So many disparate elements floating and swirling around you that make your eyes twitch. The smallest of qualities become such appealing assets; A great laugh. A winning smile. An incredible shape. An infectious spirit. All of these things refract like shards of light in your peripheral, and though each one is alluring in their own right, they remain scattered and segregated amongst a throng of individuals, rarely collecting inside one perfect specimen.

And that's why we try to be adults and not indulge individuals for a piece instead of the whole. It's why we learn to draw lines between lovers and friends. Because even if that laugh, or that smile, that body or that charm pulls you forward, these things alone aren't enough to make you stay.

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

Which is a goddamn shame. I'm a bit of a collector. I tend to organize and recruit friends based on the level of interest they generate in me, avoiding the boring, the typical or the insensitive on the basis that life is short, and you might as well spend it with people who make you smile.

But if I had the power, I'd capture, distill and bottle those elements into a simmering confection of perfect chemicals -- and go swimming in it.

Alas, I don't have this power. I can be good. I can look and not touch. I can understand the difference between need and desire. I can choose to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of emotional involvement and only traverse that minefield with someone that matters, someone that's worth risking everything for.

And hope I'm grown up enough not to destroy everything.

Chett Fineburg & The Writing Struggle

Just before I visited NYC this past October, I made a stop in Florida and visited my little brother Tyson in godforsaken Orlando.

An hour before I left, we did this. Now it's finally finished. Enjoy our pleasant diversion...


Chett Fineburg and the Writing Struggle from Tyson Lindo on Vimeo.

The Concept Is Also The Problem

So sometimes I swell up inside with feelings and observations and thoughts that ransom-demand I express them creatively. If I can't, if I don't know how to process and understand them through an art form, I become angry, negative, listless and even sort of depressed.

I need to expel what's in my head and/or heart, and I need the by-product to mean something. I need it to make sense.

For example, I've had an idea for a new blog format I've been meaning to try for years. I finally did a test pass in NYC at the end of 2008, and having just recently seen some of the early results, I feel like this might finally be the macguffin I've been looking for. A synergy of interests that converge my talents toward a smart target. It's an idea that allows me to create something new, something honest and relatable that other people can connect with, enjoy and maybe even feel inspired by.

Unfortunately, I'm already experiencing doubt and cold feet. If I want to talk about the things going on in my life and in my head, in a visual form no less, it's going to require me to pull vivid details from my personal life and the people in it.

Now, I've been doing as much in MySpace blogs for a couple years now, but this is different. There will be visuals, I'll be drawing avatars, trying to capture likenesses. Doesn't matter if I leave the names out or change them altogether, my depictions of certain events could get back to people and it could freak them out. Shit, it's freaking me out just thinking of putting my history onto the goddamn internet.

There's a complete lack of control once it's released.

So why do it? Why bother?

I suppose the answer is that for the past few years that I've been writing and blogging online, there has seemed to be an overwhelming amount of interest and support from those who have been kind enough to respond, comment or encourage. I wrote a goddamn advice column for christ's sake. People put my words together and react, and luckily, it's a positive reaction.

But I've tried not to get into specifics too much. I used to think I'd turn some of the most devastating yet hilarious moments of my life into works of art that people could appreciate, that some of my worst adventures would become my best stories.

But a couple of years ago, I found I'd appeared in someone's work: a hack job smear campaign short film created by a spiteful ex-girlfriend.

And in that blinding instant, I realized what it's like to be turned from an intimate companion to a cheap anecdote.

From that moment on, I felt like every song ever written about someone you loved was a bullshit play for sympathy from needy artists. That we're all full of shit. That perspective is an illusion and everyone's trying to look good instead of being honest.

And thinking of myself as an honest man, that knowledge sort of damaged my ideals about what's appropriate to share, what one can cull from the clay of life to sculpt a vision.

Maybe I'm rambling here. I'm just saying that I try my best to respect privacy, to protect the secrets and insecurities of others. I might be an agnostic, but I still believe in treating others as you wish to be treated, as the good (crazy) book says.

So what do I do? I feel like I can't move forward with my vision for this project until I deal with this issue. I can't concentrate on or execute this undertaking if I'm struggling in the dark with how honest to be.

I don't enjoy hurting anyone, unless they're an evil fuck and truly deserve it. That's a sweet sensation of righteousness.

But I'm not sure how to fly this thing. Not yet.

The butler did it! (7 years ago)

I'm a messy person, so when I need to find something in particular, it usually involves rummaging through everything else. This also means sporadic reunions with long lost artifacts that flash me back to times I've mostly forgotten or washed away.

Case in point: an artifact unearthed from my romantic past. Evidence of a relationship that was defining to experience and devastating to end. I'll always remember the first time love came right back at me. I'd been waiting for what seemed like six consecutive lifetimes, and by the time I turned twenty, it was my turn.

It was just as good as the fucking movies.

So tonight I found the journal that she left me after we broke up so many years ago. Inside are less than a dozen entries she wrote while we were together. Looking over them again, I came to a big time realization -- I pushed her away.

The words in the journal were of undying adoration, pledging to stay by my side forever, but fearing the day I'd pull away and stop seeing her as some divine creature of serendipity. She knew I'd built her up, her fragile self-esteem didn't think she'd survive the drop if and when it happened.

And it did. In stages. And now I can articulate why. I used to think we just fell out of love -- I was wrong.

What happened was, my honesty, my goddamn brutal, indignant honesty had to make subtext context: I didn't see us working out in the end. I saw writing on the wall. We weren't meant to last forever. We'd enjoy our time together in college, but beyond that, I knew life had other plans in store for the both of us.

And of course, when she heard that poison, she started to pull out. She pulled until we were both at equal distance. Then we both agreed to break it off.

Which was fine until I lost my mind over it. But it was too late. I'd chosen my path and couldn't stray. Neither could she. She gravitated elsewhere. She moved on to someone else.

And she married him.

And why, you ask? Why did I do this? Why did I give up on the first true love I ever had reciprocated? Why have I repeated this pattern with every relationship or flame since?

Because my parents conceived me with special, superhuman abilities, and one of them is a Sensory Perception to NEVER END UP WITH THE WRONG PERSON.

I'm so terrified of making the biggest mistake of my lifetime by shacking up with the wrong woman, it's as if I receive broadcast signals from the future warning me to get the hell out when I sense things aren't meant to be.

And they never are, really. There's always something. They're never the girl you see yourself spending the rest of our life with.

And even so, who the hell is that girl, anyways? What does she look like? What does she have that all of the others don't?

I don't know. I know we weren't meant for each other. Maybe it's me, the me from now, feeling justified, sending those emotions back to a terrified and insecure 21 year old kid that he'll live and that he made the right call to hold out for the right one.

I'm saying all of this because I met someone recently who really fucking scared me. I've spent a few years being the most aloof motherfucker in the room, but the moment someone perforates your atmosphere and exposes you to a whole new spectrum of emotions and energies, well -- it's exciting but exceedingly terrifying.

I was scared about the future. I didn't want my powers to kick in. I just wanted this to work.

I turned right back into that scared, twenty-year old kid.

And maybe that's who I'll always be, the high-energy, desperate to please comedian who freaks out the moment things become real. Real feelings. Real fears.

When I got scared recently, I ran away at the first sign of trouble, of vulnerability, I suppose. Because the fear of falling for someone works both ways: you're terrified it might not work out, but the fear is fueling your heart into overdrive and you're reaching record speeds. Your thoughts, your blood, it all charges the same battery. It possesses you.

It's seven years later. I still don't want to settle for the wrong person. I'm still looking for the right one. And I'm still entitled to freak out and run if things get weird. Cash out. Take myself off the shelf.

Sometimes we're not ready to deal.

But I have to believe I'll be ready to go all in if it feels like love. Need to believe I can get there, that I can overcome all those wonderful abilities my folks gave me, the ability to not trust, to not let my guard down, to always have an exit strategy.

I'm looking forward to facing the fear again, to come out swinging, to skip a beat and notice that the ticker still works.

I don't know when that's gonna happen. I don't know what's around the corner.

I'm just doing my goddamn best to grow up.

Use Somebody

Dear East Coast West Coast,

This blog is a joke. Looking at how infrequently it's used for absolutely anything by anybody downright pisses me off.

We seriously need to revise the purpose of this motherfucker or just stop kidding ourselves and delete the goddamn thing.

In other news: I'm unhappy. Go sit on a nail.

regards,
Drew

RIP: LA Radio

My radio was stolen out of my car in October of 2006, only a couple months after relocating to Los Angeles. Being the cheapskate pleasure-delayer that I am, I left my car silent, without any semblance of musical contact for more than a year. No radio to get me through deadly LA traffic, no CD player to get my mind energized and my eyelids opened wide.

No sir. I lived the humbled life. My car was mute. My passenger conversations hushed and awkward.

It wasn't until early 2008 that I finally went nuts and bought a new stereo, with a CD Player/MP3 port.

And it was soon after that I found Indie 103.1, the best radio station in Los Angeles.

The reception was crystal clear on the West Side/Culver City area where I had moved. Up in the valley, the signal vanished, but luckily I spent little time in the valley. It was a beautiful, whirlwind affair. They played good music, music I liked by indie rock/pop artists I dug. I had waited my whole life to find a refuge from the disposable, processed junk food, top 40 radios stations with their Idol ballads and club crud singles, or the castrated sounds of lite rock and easy listening tailor made for baby boomers who wanted a taste of simpler times. Don't get me started on the state of modern rock.

But Indie was different. This was my music. Fresh, fun, exciting and new. It was so good that I felt no guilt in ignoring donations to KCRW during it's pledge drive of 2008, namely because they only seemed to play about two hours of music a day with Nick Harcourt's Morning Becomes Eclectic, which in and of itself played a ration of 36% good music I hadn't heard of and 64% unintelligible, godawful nonsense that played like new age satire. Otherwise, that station was all NPR, all the time. (Side note: I'm not anti-NPR, I just can't handle it for more than ten minute intervals, as their crisp, hushed, mushy-soft voices not only put me to sleep, but actually manage to disintegrate my masculinity one cell at a time.)

No sir. All I needed was my Indie.

Then things slowly changed. Just before the end of 2008, Joe Escalante's morning show disappeared, taking with it an array of interesting guests, David Lynch's offbeat weather reports and Timothy Olyphant's hyper-enthusiastic sports recaps.

This worried me. As 2009 began I also noticed some jarring new musical selections that belonged on a toxic top 40 station. Even some KROQ-style, crappy squaw-rock found it's way on from time to time.

But I told myself not to worry. Everything would be fine. There was still good music to find on my one, shining ray of hope on FM radio.

Until last week, when Indie 103.1 announced that it would cease broadcast immediately due to corporate interference and an asphyxiating market of traditional, manufactured sludge.

I had hoped the highest hopes and said the equivalent of prayers.

But I knew I was out of luck
the day the music died

Some people might not understand. Some might say it's no big deal. But good radio is going the way of print, slowly being replaced with corporate advertising misrepresenting itself as new and exciting music.

The DJ is going the way of the Dodo, quickly replaced by corporate stooges, yes men, and employees doing what the record company tells them (eat tar and die, Clear Channel.)

So yes, I'm pissed. And I mourn the loss of a great radio station, run by a collection of great DJ's that brought a little something to my life while trapped in my claustrophobic Corolla. Props to Joe Escalante, TK, Jonesy's Jukebox, Ted Roman, and all the fantastic people that made Indie 103.1 such a fantastic station. I hope you're all reading and Googling the mountains of online eulogies and blogging laments from the listeners you delighted.

I for one will regret having only spent a year with you. Though the station lives on in electronic, online form, it does so without the voices and the personalities that helped make the station what it was.

Farewell, Indie. You will be missed.

Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies of 2008

So instead of pasting the same blog into this blog, why don't I just hotlink you to my Top 10 Favorite Films of 2008.

But for being such good boys and girls and reading this ill-advised, and generally abandoned blog (what was Keiko thinking? Nobody reads or updates this sucker) I'll give you a special gift!

Top 10 Most Disappointing Films of 2008

A number of factors go into being disappointed by a movie. Obviously you don't like it very much, but to be disappointing, a movie has to first elicit some kind of expectation, an interest in quality that will be utterly dashed by the level of sucktitude, or in most cases general mediocrity, that the film delivers.

So I'm going to structure this list in descending order of crappy disappointment, from the highs of "meh," to the mids of "huh?" to the depths of "WTF IS THIS SHIT???"

10) Man On Wire

This is a lovely documentary about an incredible historic event, but it is also the only movie this year that put me to sleep. Literally. I fell asleep during this movie for like 5-7 minutes. In the afternoon.

The film has the unfortunate side effect of squirming and stretching its run time while trying to appear suspenseful, but we already can tell the outcome of the documented event; namely a man walking a tight rope between the twin towers in 1974 New York City. Despite the colorful subjects and the unbelievable true story itself, Man On Wire feels like a special you DVR'd on Cable due to your distant Uncle's reccommendation. This film has been unneccesarily hailed as the best documentary of the year when it just isn't the case.

It's a good doc on par with something you'd watch on The Discovery Channel. No more, no less.



9) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

What can I say? I just didn't care. It's a beautiful, lavish, exquisitely photographed motion picture with some of the best special effects I've ever seen.

But after a while, I just stopped caring. Maybe it was Brad Pitt's vacant expression. Or the film's snobby refusal to indulge me in the least bit of sentimental fashions (commence trite Forrest Gump bashing by insecure film nerds desperate for anti-establishment cred.)

This is a long, beautiful movie that absolutely did not hold me emotionally, and for that, I wound up walking out of the movie theater feeling just as empty and uninspired as any typical Hollywood blockbuster. It is not the masterpiece we were hoping for.

Oh well. It really did look pretty.



8) Wall-E

Go ahead and throw stones. I'll still die disappointed in Pixar's latest effort. Once again, what looks like a masterpiece doesn't quite live up to Pixar's heavenly standard of flawless quality.

Which isn't to say the film is bad. It's not bad. It's very good. In fact, for the first half it's nearly perfect, a near silent love story between isolated robots sharing a dying planet together for a chance at a magical connection.

Then the film jumps to a spaceship and everything drops a few notches.

The people. The people screw this movie up. Okay, everyone is so fat and lazy that they cannot read, write, walk, prepare food or even communicate on their own without robotic support.

Then out of nowhere, these flaccid, flabby, giant babies go MacGuyver against rogue sentry machines and decide to rebuild a post-apocalyptic planet?

No. No that makes no sense. By switching the focus from Wall-E's quest for companionship to a contrived redemption of a fat, lazy, hopeless human race feels like a cheat, precisely because it isn't earned. If the humans' return to accountability was to be believed, their initial incompetent existence should have been scaled back. You can't go from cartoony, exaggerrated satire to realistic ray of human achievement in thirty minutes. It didn't work and it damaged the already charming story of Wall-E and Eve.

Still a good movie. Just not the masterpiece the trailers and critics promised...



7) Doubt

The best acting on the face of the earth can't help a story that refuses to go anywhere. This movie is so lacking in story you find yourself wondering if you missed whatever brilliant scene full of detail and complexity would have pulled it all together.

It doesn't exist. Evil puritan accuses noble progressive of something. They argue. The end. Literally.

There's a great write up on why the translation from stage to screen fails here




6) The Reader

The Reader reminds me of those empty BBC telefilms about sour, angst-ridden ugly European men feeling sorry for themselves for decades.

Maybe I'm a heartless prick, but I simply did not care about some guy's inability to get over the first Nazi he ever slept with. I know, I know, Kate Winslet is an unforgettably sexy Nazi, but I'm calling a spade a spade. This movie bored me. I cared less and less as it went along, checking the time, hoping we had reached some kind of conclusion again and again, counting sheep by the number of times Ralph Fiennes or Kate Winslet made pained faces in silence.

Oh, and the atrociously overwrought score didn't help either.



5) Synechdoche, NY

I went in prepped for a frustrating, downer of a mind-fuck, and I still walked out disappointed.

Charlie Kauffman decides to spend two excruciating hours whacking us with a hammer to get us to understand that death and decay really sucks. And to prove it, he's constructed a film devoid of emotional complexity or variety, only misery and ineptitude. Phillip Seymour Hoffman spends the entire movie crying. Women throw themselves at him and he can't get it up. Bizarre dream logic interjections. And funerals. Lots of funerals.

At least Benjamin Button had the grace to deal with Death using a little humor, a little joy, a little bit of peaks to go with the valleys.

Kauffman's film loses the audience and winds up feeling like yet another uppity auteur trying far too hard to be different.

Blecch.




4) Slumdog Millionaire

I believed the hype. That was my first mistake.

I'm all for magical realism, but a film that takes place over an episode (or two) of (Indian) "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" for the majority of the film, and decides to fit as many contrivances into one story as possible, and feature a bland, naive protagonist being nothing of interest besides naive and innocent, well, it just doesn't feel right to me.

The first third is first rate, detailing Jamal's childhood in India with his big brother, but that's primarily because filmmaker Danny Boyle is using real Indian children who speak their native tongue. Once he switches actors and languages (subtitles too much for you?) the film loses it's touch, turning into a gruesome hodgepodge of realistic, cruel violence and corny, over the top sentimental schmaltz. Now, I like a sentimental film that tugs at the heart strings as much as the next cineaste, but this film violated a cardinal rule of the INTERESTING CHARACTER DOCTRINE:

Jamal is boring. He isn't smart, or crafty, or cool or charismatic. The hero basically gets the girl because he's lucky. Because shit happens and luckily, he remembers details about said shit that has occurred, thus becoming a champion at the stupidest game show ever made (that's harsh, I'm sure Hollywood Squares or anything ever aired on MTV sucked much worse.)

But it's true. He's another of these old timey, naive dreamer heroes who simply loves a beautiful girl while getting beaten up by nefarious villains.

The movie literally has the nerve to include this cringe-inducing bit of dialogue:

Jamal: "Run away with me."
Litka: "Run away with you? What will we live on?"
Jamal: "Love."

Aaaaaaaaaand vomit. I wanted to fall in love with this movie, I really did. I'm happy for audiences who are fooled by a violent movie with a happy ending. But I'm not. I'm frustrated and disappointed and I hope it doesn't win best picture, because it really doesn't deserve it.

Rent City Of God if you're looking for a slumdog masterpiece, kids...



3) Hellboy II

This is my fault for not going with my instincts and avoiding the movie altogether. A bright, shiny trailer that did absolutely nothing for me should have been enough. But then there were the glowing, salivating reviews, once again singing the same old song: "Del Toro the genius," "Del Toro's limitless imagination," "Del Toro's beautiful sense of design and detail!"

So I payed eleven bucks and proceeded to feel like an idiot for two hours.

Look, I get it, Ron Perlman is a good fit for the character. Unfortunately, the movie isn't. Bad editing. Hokey writing. Repetitive fight scenes. Selma Blair trying to act again (CRINGE.)

It's just a lousy, unimpressive movie. It's just as empty and meaningless as any Vin Diesel or Nicholas Cage action-blasphemy, but it gets a pass because critics like Guillermo Del Toro so much. I suddenly remember another slight sequel Del Toro made that got loads of internet press fellatio: Blade 2. Also filled to the brim with an absence of substance.

Nobody gives a shit about Hellboy. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, these are iconic heroes who hold our attention and imaginations with a firm, iconic grip.

Hellboy just doesn't translate to film. Mignola's books were creepy, macabre thrillers dripping with atmosphere. Del Toro's Hellboy is a neon-light effects show without any regard for pacing or subtlety. These scenes don't breathe, they dissolve into one another at rapid speed and high impact melodrama in order to get to the next fight scene, creature, or fight scene.

And I find myself not giving a shit. I should have just caught it on basic cable like everyone else will, because make no mistake, this big-budget flick disappeared, and we can be thankful that it is the last chapter in the live action Hellboy saga.

I hate myself.



2) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

Are you serious? You're joking, right? You waited 20 years to make this?

20 years for CGI gophers? 20 years for CGI Aliens? 20 years for Indiana Jones to ony use his whipe TWICE??? (once to help hoist up his fat friend who is only three feet away??)

20 years for boring, fifteen minute scenes of yawn-inducing exposition? For Karen Allen to be embarrassingly reintroduced as grinning third banana? For Shia to get to do more than Indy? For Indy to act stupid and not even attempt to outsmart the bad guys?

CGI ALIENS??!! SERIOUSLY??

And you didn't even give us a cool archaeological funhouse with booby traps and death-defying stunts to make Indy look cool.

Oh, and a stupid-ass, contrived wedding was a great way to end the series. Bravo.

Thank you for doing the impossible, George Lucas. I am now an internet troll shouting that you've raped my childhood.



1) American Teen
I'm not even going to bother to restate the fabricated, manipulative bullshit attempt at a "documentary" that is American Teen. I can only link you to my original, boiling mad reaction and to a concurring (one of many!)
review by the esteemed Alexandra DuPont.

This film is the plague, sent down by God as punishment for all those who dare watch faux-reality series and in turn become more vacant and false themselves.

The Breakfast Club had jocks, geeks, freaks and beauty queens. Today's generation are just terrible actors searching desperately for a part...