The only explanation is that there is no explanation.

"I don't know where my keys are."
"Maybe you left them at the dick-sucking store."

If he wasn't a blatant racist, this video would be a lot easier to deal with. Thanks to Jay Harbison for passing along...

This is from the January Showgasm at Ars Nova. I realize that I still have, and will likely never outgrow, an unhealthy obsession with everything to do with "Full House." I apologize in advance to my future children.

New Feature

This is a new feature where I pick my favorite g-chat of the week from my friend Jocey.

Jocelyn:
No, he's nice it's good

he's small too

small and nice

i eat cheerios all day long like i'm a child

Ew.

The school sponsored this. Keep that in mind as you watch.

Disassociation

Everyone should go out and try to see 'Fish Tank,' a new British indie that's playing here at the IFC Center and maybe somewhere in your town, you who are reading this. Katie Jarvis, a newcomer who plays the lead in the film (the director watched her yelling at her boyfriend on a subway platform and asked her to come and audition) has what should be an Academy-Award nominated performance, but I guess because the movie only came out here last week she's not eligible? I don't know how that works. It came out in England last year.


What's remarkable about Fish Tank is how fragmented it is - how the parts lead up to what might be the best final 10 minutes of any movie I've seen in ages - and afterwards I tried to piece together why it worked so well. Maybe it's because Jarvis had never acted before, so you never watch her thinking too hard about anything. Or maybe it's because the director only gave the actors the part of the script they were shooting that day, so they were never sure what exactly was going to happen next or where they were going to go. You watch confusion and false confidence and sadness in equal measure.

The performance goes hand in hand with the book I'm reading right now, the new Nick Flynn memoir The Ticking is the Bomb, which I'm really liking. It makes me jealous, a memoir like this - full of moments and poetic happenings that never feel forced or incoherent. I think about how difficult it is for me to simply inhabit a moment without feeling like I'm on the outside of it, watching it happen and acknowledging its existence like a referee. The stuff of memoir is the stuff you experience without realizing its significance until much later, the stuff you can't analyze at once. I tend to look too hard at or too far askew of things, never just letting a moment be what it is and have that be it. If you explain your life to death you're not really living it...

So, yeah, my memoir might be sucky.

Curious.

I know I'm so far behind the Benjamin Button train, y'all, but just bear with me a second...

Was there nobody in any production meeting, writer's meeting, actor's meeting, or studio meeting of any kind who wanted to speak up and say: "Hey guys, maybe we should put some scientists in this movie who might want to do some tests on Benjamin Button and figure out why the hell he's growing backwards." ?? "Because it's kind of an amazing thing that he's growing backwards and you'd think a scientist would catch wind."

I mean I'm all for time-spanning/fantastical/unrealistic Forrest Gump-esque sagas starring Brad Pitt (I see them all!) but for God's sake, I couldn't stop praying for ONE scientist the entire 7,063 hours this movie went on.

Just. one. scientist.

Showgasm on Thursday

Come on out to this free show I'll be hosting each month at Ars Nova!

This month features performances from:

Jive Grave
The Striking Viking Story Pirates
Snakes
Chris Rozzi

and house band, The Morning Pages

TICKETS here!