We are who we pretend to be

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

What Dreams May Come?

I'm not (wholly) proud to say I've spent the better part of the last few days doing one of two things:
1) eating tremendous amounts of delicious food and
2)pining over Elizabeth Kuchinich



This is by far the hottest potential first lady in history; lo, indeed, perhaps she is the hottest person I've ever seen to be married to Dennis Kucinich (eating a kebab).


Over the last few days I've sunk into sort of a general malaise. Its symptoms include:
1) itchiness on arms and back
2) talking excessively about "fall foliage" to anyone who will listen
3) nostalgia for Robin Williams' movies I never really liked, like "Jumanji" and "Patch Adams"

and most disturbingly:
4) I seem to have developed spontaineous knowledge of the nature and purpose of the universe.

Sort of weird, all this celestial insight, but no one said infinite vision was easy. Look at Joan of Arc, she went crazy, and all she got was a glimspe. I got the entire enchillada a few nights ago while dozing through an episode of TWIN PEAKS. The entire history and purpose of humankind, whispered to me in a dream.

It's true I've forgotten what was whispered; It's also true this exact situation happened in the Twin Peaks episode I fell asleep watching. But no matter. One day I'll remember. One day I'll know again exactly why the world turns and oceans' heave and brew. Why the crisp night leaves a hollow quite unlike sadness, although that is how I would describe it to most people. Why the ebb and flow and hiatus of breath at close range, supine in bed, is so beautiful and devestatingly vast. I'll know all that again and I'll use this knowldge to lure Elizabeth Kucinich to bed.

Happy Thanksgiving.

a fondness for wands

Nothing makes me more angry than ex-post-facto politicization.

Obviously I'm talking about Harry Potter.

For those of you not Josh nor Shana (who both told me), you may or may not know J.K. Rowling, the rags-to-riches scribe of the Harry Potter books, announced one of the main characters in the books was gay -- the Head Wizard, and Harry Potter's role-model and father figure-- Albus Dumbledore.

Listen, I don't mind that he's gay. In fact, I like it -- rope the kiddies in with action, adventure, and (heteronormative) romance and then sucker-punch them with genuine social issues: that's always been my philosophy. But I think this is just sort of an egregious press-related maneuver--I mean, if Dumbledore was gay, as Rowling claims, PUT SOMETHING ABOUT IT IN THE BOOKS. Because there's nothing. I mean, when you are long dead and gone, J.K., all that will remain are the books. And your great political statement about heralding a gay hero was no more than yesterday's Drudge Report.

I know the obvious retort: it just isn't a big deal, so she didn't feel the read to mention it. Well that's just asinine and does not reflect the society in which we live. It's great for kids to have positive role models that are minorities -- whatever minority they may be -- but I think it's just sort of sneaky, media-whoreish, and narratively negligent to mention this key character detail just after the fact,casually at a press conference.

Because, let's face it kids, DUMBLEDORE does not exist. Dumbledore is a character in a book series. Anything that dumbledore is is in the books. He doesn't exist paratextually, although apparently his sexuality does.

I don't know; maybe I'm overreacting.

Promises are like babies: easy to make, hard to deliver

Saw Cronenberg's "Eastern Promises". Here is my treatise on yakuza, tiny babies, blintzes, and naked eye-gouging. There are spoilers, sorry:


It's interesting that David Cronenberg and David Lynch both released films in 2007 featuring eastern Europeans shadily huddled in alleyways. These movies also shared a similar theme: the fetishization of violence and the abhorrent results of realizing its appeal.


Eastern Promises is really just A History of Violence, but having roped in a more mainstream audience with his previous (and much more mainstream) film he allows himself a little more of the "bodyhorror" that characterized his earlier work. Cronenberg, for you nonfans, approached horror from a modern cautionary perspective, in Videodrome and Crash and The Fly and Naked Lunch and Dead Ringers(his best film) he shows us what happens when "technology" and "the body" overlap due to one of three things:

1- man's hubris (The Fly);

2- unstoppable perversion (Crash, Dead Ringers)

3-insanity (Naked Lunch)


With A History of Violence he allows his thematic approach to mature. It isn't modern technology as such that threatens "normal" humanness, if such a thing exists, rather it is the absolute failure of anonymity--the impossibility of anonymity--in the modern world that makes us constantly at risk. Viggo's character cannot re-start life after leaving his gangster ways because his gangster life weighs down on him -- he is "found out" but mostly because he could never really hide.


Similarly, Eastern Promises offers us an extension of this failure of anonymity. A Russian girl gives birth and dies wordlessly, but, alas, she has left a revealing diary that threatens the existence of underground yakuza-style Russian gangsters living in London. This damning book draws Naomi Watts and Viggos' characters further into this dark world, but also draws them together. Not only are the identity of prominent Russian gangsters threatened, but most importantly at stake is that of THE (tiny) BABY born in the film's early scenes. Her existence provides genetic proof of the villain having raped her, and is used to close the case in a sense.

I like this movie because we are reintroduced to what Cronenberg started in his last film, an exgesis on why we can never restart out lives/have two identities/go on lying forever. Not in this world. Not in a world where dying women leave diaries. Not in a world where babies surface to genetically prove our crimes. Not in a world where perverse curiosity (Naomi Watts is drawn further and further into this world because she "cares about the fate" of the baby, but her fetishistic maternal instinct are understood, in the film, as at least enmeshed in her sexual desire for Viggo).

I was interested most of all to see what Cronenberg would do with his new mainstream attention. What he would force THE EYE OF AMERICA (hyperbole maybe, but H. of V. was a big, big film) to gaze perseverently upon?

Answer: A dick. Viggo Mortenson's dick. An extended, naked, shower fight sequence. Well choreographed, I might add. Not what I want to see-- but sort of brilliant, Mr. Cronenberg.

I like mainstream-Cronenberg, even if he no longer can serve up perfect horror premises like he did in Dead Ringers (identical twin gynaecologists who work on mutant vaginas). But La-Di-Da, la-di-da.

D.C.ed over

Went to Washington D.C. a few weeks ago and had a horrible nightmare.

In Washington, because there isn't a one-fare-to-anywhere model of subway pricing, you have to swipe your METROTICKET or CHARLIEBUCK or whatever the hell they call it in our nation's capital (Freedomcard?) before you board and after you get off the train.


Listen, I get it.
Okay, Jeremy? I get how "awesome" D.C. metro is -- the flashing lights that let you know when you are about to get hit by a train, the nifty ticker that lets you know when the next Shady Grove-bound redline is careening through. Thanks. I even appreciate the entirely too-futuristic subway decor, which honestly looks more like the sub-arctic government base set in the X-Files movie than a public transportation depot:

(actual film still-- tell me I'm wrong)

Anyway, why, D.C. METRO, why? Why can't we develop a better system? What if I lose my ticket while on the ride? (this happened). What if I am wearing cargo pants and cannot find the pocket it is in for over 5 minutes after de-boarding? (this happened).

So the nightmare I had involved me being in the D.C. subway and losing my ticket. When I tried to tell a police officer they told me basically that I was shit out of luck and had to start life down in the subway. It is at this point I realize there is a whole tent community down in the subway of people who lost their ticket and were forced to re-start life "on the other side of the turnstile" with I-bankers, Smithsonian curators, even a (gay, Republican, fondling) senator here and there. I woke up just as a Hobo-ified Lila Lipscomb (small difference) was offering me some canned peas.

Talked about being D.C.ed over.

more things should brim

Mattnath here, getting my finger back on the pulse of the internet community. Hence, visual.

so I guess I could recognize that it has been 6 months since I've posted...

so I guess I could apologize for not getting up those thoughts on my trip to Chicago from way back when ...

or the fact that I went to India for two months without posting...

or the major life, career, and personal changes that have popped up over the last few months that have been unaccounted for here ...

but those things are past and the future, while humid on this eastern seaboard, is brimming with possibility. Finally, brimming. I like saying that: brimming. More things should brim.

Welcome to my blog new people; welcome back to the old fans (all three of you); welcome man and beast and demi-man and demi-beast and, why the hell not, gerbils (here and in heaven -- we miss you Lucy). The word 'blog' comes from the ancient Greek word for "a whale's vagina" but in the parlance has come to describe the collective mental masturbation and faux-urbane pontification of an entire generation. America. Fuck yeah.

As for me, I am much happier now that I've gotten that whole law school thing out of my system. Who the fuck wants to be a lawyer? (except, well, the many of you reading this that are currently in law school). More precisely: I dont want to be a lawyer. I never have. I'm glad I've finally admitted it to myself and to the World-At-Large. Not that I need to have this conversation with the cyber-universe, lord knows I've had it too many times already, but suffice it to say that I'm too young to submit to the idea that I shouldn't chase my dreams. Fuck it: they are my dreams. Anyway the bizarre existential weight I felt to GO GO GO WIN WIN WIN has abated, and hopefully now I'm concentrating on what I really want: sex and, occasionally, sushi.

India was great. Just what I needed. I don't really know what to say. A few months ago this was me (I tri-poded this):

and now I'm here:

That was a vista unto Nanda Devi, India's highest peak. By far the most beautiful campsite of my life.

Yesterweekend went up to Rhode Island for Andrew Kerner's wedding. I love the Kerner family, and the Roth family Andrew is marrying are just as crazy of characters. It was the best 300,000 dollar frat party I've ever been to. Picture an aging hippie living in her protest-filled youth, the hottest 48 year old in the world, three jeff kerners, a basset hound named Lola, a short doctor-creature named ted, and Elmer Fudd crammed inside a circus tent taking shorts of warm vodka. And that was only the rehearsal dinner. It was freaking fantastic. The ceremony itself was short, sweet and poignant. There's no one I could be happier for -- Andrew and Ali you guys rock all the groove spots.

And love prevails. Who would have thought?

So, with that I'll leave you with for now. Don't be a stranger! Hope we can talk more, I feel we've grown apart. I want to get back to how things used to be, Baby, before the stretches of silence, before New Blogger, before India. Back when I was gonna be a lawyer. Back before things began to brim.

all things go all things go

Went to chicago. Gathering my thoughts, then will post. Until then enjoy these pics. -Matt


Comb-over to end all comb-overs:

Trinia and I (that's lake Michigan, bitches):

Polarizing lenses are fun. This is right by Kevin's house:

And this is Kevin. On AirTran, Newark, NJ:

Taken over Trinia out the window. Bittersweet to be home:

Koogan is cute:

This was at the awesome Shedd Aquarium. Its a lizard or somehting. I don't know:

on the rocks with a twist

Twister is markedly more enjoyable when you are shit-faced. I only learned that this weekend when 20 of us paralegal-types went up to Vermont on a ski trip. Not my usual scene, I know, but as an installment of 2007's winter-doesn't-suck series I thought I'd give it a go. Twister, normally sort of uncomfortable and over-simplistic, is the kind of game where slightly-sweaty drunken fumbling and large dots of bright color are celebrated, not shunned. It, and the whole weekend, was a ton of fun.


Anyway, fifty drinks later this happened:

I do not know how we got into that position, but I think it was a "Right-Hand: YELLOW." What other games would be fun drunk? Write in and give me your opinion willya? The winner of this contest gets drunk on me, and we will play the winning game.

It occurs to me now that the Nintendo Wii is a drunk person's system. Yes sir, when I knock back a few all I want to do is box. Wii Sports lets me. The Bergenites just got a wii, so naturally I am headed over there today to play. I have a Wii story but it will have to wait until tomorrow. Until then...then.

-MSN

trying the winter-doesn't-suck approach

I am the only idiot that goes hiking in new hampshire on the coldest weekend ever (well Paven, pictured below, was also idiot enough. Or super-brave). Turns out it was a great, great idea. I had a blast, stayed warm, and saw some unbelievable shit. Take a look at these pics, the first with my new camera:

there are many more if you want to see! Love, Matt

but to be wholly taciturn in your reserve, is not allowed....

Willy Wonka 2005 is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And I saw "Bats."

Welcome back to my blog. It is a new year and not a leap or election containing one. Still, it is a year where lots is going to happen. So far its dividends have paid off handsomely. More on this now.

Let us start with new years eve. Which was back in The Berkshires at Adam Freelander's house. For those of you that don't know Adam Freelander, which is no one who will ever read this, he is about yay high and is a "ginger" (as in red hair). He also is one of the funniest people I've ever met (tied with Josh and Colin Pedersen -- I've finally come to grips with the fact that they just have their 'own humor'). Anyway he has a house that can only fairly be described as awesome. There are also lots of curiosities in his house, like a sculpture of a man's bust and a very large pharmacist's scale. There were also tags everywhere that said "Freelander" which I kept finding on myself. I still do not understand them.

I do not remember New Years much at all. I don't even think I was that smashed. I just remember cooking chili for a very long time, and then drinking champagne, alone, in the jacuzzi. I remember calling things duralogs. I remember Emily Capetta. I remember playing catch the next day with Derek and Rachel Goodman. And you were there...and you were there...

I looked up freelander on wikipedia:
A freelander is term for a person or group seeking political/personal freedom through emigration to and settlement of open land. The term is primarily used in a fictional or speculative sense of freelanders emigrating from earth to other bodies in the solar system.

That is a perfect description of our friend adam. He is busting forth into the cosmos and he is muthafucking badass. In the speculative sense.

Speaking of cosmos, Stephen Hawking recently determined mathematically that a large percentage of his life's work, including the theories regarding an alternate universe that have propelled him to international stardom(and inspired the entirety of the Sailor Moon anime), cannot possibly be true. That is the true measure of a genius -- they are so smart they disprove their own theories that no one but them understood anyway.





Oscars: everything sucks. Children of Men should have a best picture nomination. Inland Empire, and Laura Dern especially, has been unilaterally shafted. But Children of Men, man, I'm glad its getting technical props but seriously. Little Miss Sunshine? Carell is a genius, okay, who else can take a homosexual Proust scholar with suicidal ideation and make it funny? But its not fucking enough. Come on. Plus the little boy that looked like a prepubescent elliott smith (actually like an adult elliott smith but miniaturized) really freaked me out.

Even Josh and I agreed on Children of Men, which is no small shakes. He after all won't touch anything Lynch with a ten foot pirogi and I fail to see the merit of going to the movies so see "Over the Hedge" or "Fantastic 4." But if there ever was a time for "to each their own." Besides I'm not the one that went to film school.

Breaking my own rule, I'm going to mention one thing about Lost. Last night Anjia figured out what the smoke monster is. She just said it, and it makes totally sense. As far as I'm concerned that no longer needs to be debated. The monster is....POLLUTION. Lost has become a liberal fairy tale about future dystopia. In the future, pollution becomes intelligent and strikes back. Don't litter.