slouching toward mediocrity

Thanks to the super-awesome Mike Russell, and the equally awesome Cort & Fatboy, I did this yesterday, and I did not throw up or cry or get stabbed.

As usual, my teeny little infant-muppet voice can barely be heard, perhaps because I was not breathing, or maybe because we abandoned our original plan of getting me drunk on the show.

Also, I didn't talk about movies AT ALL, despite Mike's many kind attempts to draw me in. The one movie-related thing I said was really about boys. Hmm.

So anyway, I'm a borderline-embarrassingly adoring Cort & Fatboy fan - I sleep in a C&F t-shirt, the one where they're being impaled by a unicorn, which Mike drew - so I was a little starstruck being right there in the room with them. (They are very handsome.) This was compounded by the fact that a poster of Byron Beck in his little wrestling singlet was beaming at me from a foot away, even as Cort's new wall-mounted stabbing knife poked singlet-Byron in the butt. Plus with the not breathing. So I was nervous, but they were really sweet. Karl says it sounds like I'm being cross-examined for the first five minutes but then it gets better (I think mainly because I stop talking). Anyhow, these guys are awesome, and you should subscribe to their podcast on iTunes immediately.

Some notes and corrections about stuff I mumbled:

1) To clarify, the motorcycle show belongs to my friend Thor Drake and his company SeeSee - the SFRC is just helping him put it on. Here's the link to it: http://theonemotorcycleshow.com/

2) Turns out I'm still ditzy with calendar-type stuff: the One Motorcycle show is on Saturday, whereas the Cort & Fatboy Midnight Movie, Dirty Dancing, is on Friday, so I might be able to go see it after all. Yeay!

3) I should clarify that Byron didn't actually say he set me up with a friend; what he said was that I went on a date with a friend of his. So it really could be anyone - but I'll never tell.

4) Kitty Pryde! Did you hear him say that? I definitely heard him say that. If it sounds like I spent the next hour fainting, that's because I did. (Wooderson is good, too, though. I'll take that. I've earned it.)

5) In real life, I love Lonely Planet, too. There may have been a bit of post-deadline grouching.

6) There's a point about 14 minutes in where Karl emailed me to say, "I really hope Mom doesn't speak Latin."

7) I forgot to mention that I had a Johnny Castle poster when I was a teen. On my bedroom ceiling. Oh yes.

8) Update from Mom: "How come you didn't know that Jennifer Gray won Dancing with the Stars?" So there you go: what she's been up to lately.

9) Johnny To's Vengeance really is great. It's filled with crazy, gorgeous fight scenes and tender hitman bonding and totally sideways takes on the standard gangster/revenge flick. And anyone who has pissed me off should not be allowed to watch it. Grr.

Movies 2010

Everyone says it's been a crappy year for movies, but I saw a bunch that I really dug. Here's the lowdown. At the end you'll find a link to the extra-special expanded episode of KBOO on which DK Holm and I talked about our picks.

10 I Liked Best

1. Winter's Bone

directed by Debra Granik, who also co-wrote the screenplay (based on Daniel Woodrell's novel)

(Daniel Woodrell is awesome!)

Jennifer Lawrence stars as 17-year-old Ree Dolly, and John Hawkes is Teardrop, her scary but ultimately honorable uncle, in a brutally sparse, Southern gothic story about meth-cookers in the Ozarks. One of several movies this year in which an adolescent girl turns out to be the strongest person in the world.

2. True Grit

by the Coen Brothers

with Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin

The first movie the Coens have made in ages (since Lebowski?) that didn't strike me as being kind of sarcastic. See above re adolescent girl.

3. The Fighter

directed by David O. Russell (who made two movies I violently hated, I Heart Huckabees and Flirting with Disaster, but also Spanking the Monkey which I thought was pretty great)

with Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams

Set in the '80s in Lowell, Mass., it's the story of boxer Micky Ward (Wahlberg) and his wacked-out brother (Bale), who trains Micky after crack addiction kills his own once-promising career. All the performances are tops; Christian Bale somehow makes his total wreck of a ruined-genius character seem charming, aggravating, heartbreaking and admirable all at once. There's a terrifying/hilarious gaggle of harpies in truly outlandish getups and hairstyles that reminded me of Pueblo (long live the claw!). Besides, any movie that features a slow-motion face-punching scene with flying sweat droplets is a good movie in my book.

4. Valhalla Rising

dir Nicolas Winding Refn (who also did Bronson and the Pusher trilogy)

with Mads Mikkelsen as One Eye

Definitely the weirdest movie I saw this year. Gorgeous, brutal, almost silent. Tarkovsky meets samurai warrior epic via sideways Bergman? Or something like that. (Daniel Menche was at the screening I went to!)

5. Scott Pilgrim vs The World

directed & co-written by Edgar Wright (of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)

Michael Cera, Allison Pill, Kieran Culkin, Ellen Wong (as Knives), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona Flowers)

Awesome integration of story and style. Easily as tricksy and visually inventive as Inception, but with added fun, and hipster-punching. Michael Cera is a walking bag of ennui who is forced out of suspended animation by surprise battles with his new girl's seven evil exes. Vanquished foes explode into coins, guitarists battle to the death, etc. Best of all is the movie's skewering of weak-ass Portland-style breakups and weaselly pursuit/avoidance of rad chicks by unworthy dorks.

6. Fish Tank

written/directed by Andrea Arnold (Red Road)

with Katie Jarvis, Michael Fassbender

15-year-old Mia lives in a cruddy Essex apartment with her mom and little sister, cares about nothing but dancing until she meets Mom's new boyfriend (Fassbender, who is amazing and also has perfect teeth). The ending's a little off-the-rails in a disappointing way, but it's devastating up until then. Awesome performance by Katie Jarvis.

7. Greenberg

directed by Noah Baumbach, co-written by Baumbach and Jennifer Jason Leigh

with Ben Stiller, Greta Gerwig

New York neurotic goes to his brother's house in LA to sort his life out, aka to "do nothing" for a while, and latches onto his brother's assistant, Florence. Excruciatingly horrible makeout scenes ensue. Has a fair amount in common with The Social Network, character-wise.

8. Inception

directed by Christopher Nolan

with Leonardo Di Caprio, Marion Cotillard, Ellen Page, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

I like movies that do things you can't do in other media; why not take advantage of the form? A few scenes in this movie were so awesome that they more than made up for its flaws. I don't need the story to be profound when the telling involves so many neat tricks. (Also: man, doesn't Joseph Gordon-Levitt look good in a suit.) There's a kinda clever Blade Runner homage; I don't think the story ends up being as head-trippy as that movie, in either version, but it's still a lot of fun, and smartly put together, and well worth a good couple of viewings.

9. 127 Hours

directed by Danny Boyle, with James Franco

Based on the memoir: Aron Ralston goes canyoning in Utah, gets his arm pinned between a boulder and the canyon wall. High jinks ensue. Franco is incredible, and the impromptu surgery is beyond gross; I've never been so emotionally moved by hideous gore.

10. Mother

director/writer Bong Joon-ho (The Host)

South Korean take on a classic whodunit, but with an intensely expressive lead performance, a strangely tranquil mood, tonal variations that are typical of Bong Joon-ho, and flat-out gorgeous visual style. Your footing keeps crumbling under you, to the point that you end up feeling completely alienated from pretty much the entire human race. Haunting.

10 Worst

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Tron: Legacy

Jonah Hex

The American

The Wolfman

Hot Tub Time Machine

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

Robin Hood

Letters to Juliet

Twilight: Eclipse

Most Frustrating:

Somewhere

written/directed by Sofia Coppola

starring Stephen Dorff, Elle Fanning

I'll write more about this one later.

Simultaneously Best/Worst:

Hausu - initially screened by WW's BAM fest in February. Nothing else like it.

Gone with the Pope, Boxer's Omen - both screened by Dan Halstead at Grindhouse Film Fest.

Also Seen & Liked:

(in no particular order)

Micmacs: French junk-shop circus romp/revenge tale/pacifist lovenote. Adorable.

Red: Helen Mirren is smoking hot, and I still think Bruce Willis is great. The flirting is tops, and the bullet's-eye view of a bullet-strewn lawn won me over right away.

Bluebeard: Crazy.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird: AWESOME and hilarious. Almost made my top ten list and probably should have.

The Social Network: Jesse Eisenberg is insanely good. I'm sick of hearing about how smart the opening scene is; it's sad that clever dialogue is so rare it inspires paroxysms of critical adulation.

Ghost Writer: Polanski is pretty good at making movies.

Black Swan: Doesn't really hold up to scrutiny, but very effective at the time; silly and scary and pretty and squirm-inducing. Fun!

Get Low: Old dudes are the best dudes.

Centurion: Over-the-top ridiculous, with no holding back on anything, especially not the ax-chopping, sword-squishing, limb-chopping or decapitation scenes. Zoom in on that shit! Yeah!

Machete: A total blast. Not a good movie, but hilarious, with many moments of total awesomeness.

Never Let Me Go: Some people found it slow, but I thought it did a really good job of adapting a book I also really liked. Definitely wanted to punch Keira Knightley in the face.

I Am Love: Wacky and sad and beautiful.

The King's Speech: Describing this movie on the radio gave me a stammer, so I won't get into it here except to say Colin Firth is perfect, and Helena Bonham-Carter is still my girlfriend.

Cropsey: Scary and depressing. People are horrible.

Knight and Day: Can't really believe I liked this, but it was a lot of fun, and Tom Cruise finally seems to understand exactly how he's funny.

Unstoppable: A really tight, super-entertaining race-the-clock train movie, and I will always happily spend two hours watching Denzel Washington.

Vincere: Mussolini opera madness.

Lebanon: Get me out of this tank! I have to pee!

Shutter Island: Totally overwrought, and a disappointment in the context of Scorsese, but Mark Ruffalo was great and it looked and sounded fantastic. Irritating ending.

Green Zone: Matt Damon. Righteousness.

Exploding Girl: Should've been boring, but it didn't bore me.

Get Him to the Greek: Unexpectedly non-sucky.

The A-Team: Very good at what it does.

Salt: It was funny.

The Warrior's Way: aka Laundry Warrior. Exploding ferris wheels! Ninjas vs cowboys in the desert! Come on!

Really wish I'd seen before writing this, & will see soon:

Sweetgrass (documentary about some of the last American cowboys, herding their sheep through Montana mountains to summer pasture)

Red Riding trilogy (a British TV adaptation of David Peace's books about serial murderers, including the Yorkshire Ripper - everyone I know loved it)

The Strange Case of Angelica (Dreamy fable of longing from 102-year-old Manoel de Oliveira)

Wild Grass (A romance by Alain Resnais, with the awesome Mathieu Amalric)

Four Lions (Fumbled terrorism + British satire and the blackest humor)

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy documentariness)

Enter the Void (Gaspar Noe is never boring)

Carlos (Carlos the Jackal - everyone I know loved this, too)

White Material (Claire Denis, with Isabelle Huppert, also never boring)

Restrepo (Sebastian Junger & co in the thick of the Afghanistan war; allegedly holds its own with the best Vietnam docs)

Blue Valentine (Looks to be a corkscrew to the heart, but you know me, I like that)

Anyone who wants to hear me stumble and stutter my way through this list out loud, with frequent rescues by DK Holm, should check out the year-end Movie Talk show on KBOO here. Apologies in advance.

top 10 movies, take 1 (sort of)

It begins: the Great Listmaking of Two Thousand and Ten. I'm not even close to putting mine together yet, so instead, here are a few from Dennis Lim. He doesn't even mention The A-Team! Weird. In fact, I'm ashamed to admit, I've seen exactly zero of the films on his 10-best list. I need to get crackin'. See you cats in mid-January!

(p.s. Although I am very dedicated, I probably won't be able to make myself watch Trash Humpers. Just so's you know...I'd hate to get everybody's hopes up.)

the best thing about Sweden

...since I'm on the subject...might be saffron ice cream, or it might be Strindberg or Bergman or Torgny Lindgren. But most of the time I think it's John Bauer. He pretty much taught me what to look for in a prince...not to mention how to avoid becoming enslaved by trolls. Handy!

MH blog

Just found:

http://www.drawger.com/marcellus/

Look at the images of his to-do lists. He showed me some of these when I interviewed him a couple years ago...pretty cool stuff. Also, check out the letters he writes to his little nieces and nephews. I think I need to up my game!

announcement

I love Ed Park.

(Not exactly news.)

I actually know these dudes

They are tough!

http://www.siegecraftnw.com/N10-P1.htm

(#92 is Patrick, 88 is The Steve, and 105 is T Bag)

picture time!

I finally put a bunch of photos from Sweden online -- you can see them here. Wish I were a better photographer, or had one with me on this trip. I lack the skill and patience to do Sweden justice -- it was prettier than this, believe me.

(And apologies to any purists out there for having fooled around with some of these...I got bored, started pushing buttons, one thing led to another...you know how it is. Voila, iridescent lawns!)

it's about that time

When you write for a living and you can't do anything else, you know that sooner or later that the deadline is going to come screaming down on you like a goddamn banshee. There's no avoiding it... So one day you just don't appear at the El Adobe bar anymore; you shut the door, paint the windows black, rent an electric typewriter and become the monster you always were — the writer. Hunter S. Thompson

Of course, what he's not mentioning is that awkward period between the time you quit the El Adobe and the time you start the actual writing of the thing you're writing, a necessary period of flexible duration filled with awful, tormented, pointless, unproductive writhing and lots and lots of idle consumption of decades-old music videos online that you missed when you were a teen because you lived in the sticks and only got one channel, which was not MTV, thus making this idiotic absorption justifiable on the grounds that a cultural critic ought to have a passing familiarity with the culture, etc. Catching up, you see, on the '90s, more or less, when you were a square and didn't know any better. And then there's all the forgetting of the vague entanglements and attachments you may or may not currently have, and which may or may not float across your vision while you're trying to work, creating a state of sweet desolation that can only be sidestepped by watching precisely the right music videos online at precisely the right time and in the right order, at the risk of catatonic gloom if you get it wrong. The bar is not the only enemy, you see.

On the other hand, though: look how cute Hunter was! Dang. I bet they missed him down there at the El Adobe.

comix

I reviewed a handful of comix for Bookpage right before going to Sweden -- not my usual doom-and-gloom-with-explosions, but not bad for what they are. (Plus I still get a little kick out of being able to say, "Today I will read comic books all day, for my job." I am a child.)

smart!

Thor knows a little something about the subject of speed...this line from his flattrack race report struck me as brilliant, and worth trying to remember next time I get out there and start hyperventilating: "Racing isn't about being fast, it's more about slowing everything else down."

Yep Again

Another perfect summing-up, found via Leif Pettersen:

http://bit.ly/arkTaQ

the breaks

For my birthday this year, I woke up at 4.30am, packed up the Jeep, put on my robocop suit and rode my tiny motorcycle around the track a few times. It was pouring rain, of course. And I fell off, of course. (The cool thing is that the way I landed made me think I must've been looking through the turn like a pro!) Then, after a few hours of fancying up the little bike with the help of some incredibly generous pals, I caught a ride down to Salem to see what some of the other guys were up to. Here's how that went, from the Kerr's point of view:

http://sideburnmag.blogspot.com/2010/10/gaining-speedconfidence.html

(In the accompanying photo, it kinda seems like I'm turning away from the gore, but I'm pretty sure I was just looking at a boy.)

Several of the guys won trophies that night, but Dan wins the championship for attitude. (Plus now he has a huge stripey cast that matches his race bike!)

Germ, T-Bag and HUG, victorious

Yep

Pretty much sums it up:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html

:)

Hmmm....

OK so, Punch Drunk Love...maybe not the ideal movie to turn to after a whole night of willful unsleeping and pale insignificant torment.

(I cry easily.)

On the other hand, maybe it IS exactly perfect. You never know, not for years....

home-ish

Saw this guy's photos yesterday morning: Pieter ten Hoopen. Pinpoint-accurate images of what it feels like to be lonesome in Stockholm when it's dark and cold and bleak. (Cuz y'know...it's not all glittering utopia ALL the time....every beautiful thing is allowed to be moody, right?)

Anyway. Heading home in the morning - I'm spending tonight at the giant airplane they turned into a youth hostel out by the airport. Little round windows...adorable. Looking forward to battling my way through the Wall of Angry Spiders to my own bed tomorrow. More pics up when I get back and unyetlagged. xo!

my friends are cooler AND faster than I am

Thor borrowed my race bike - check it out. Little bike must've been pretty surprised! I bet it didn't think it could move like that.

There's one race weekend left this year, apparently (they'd talked of canceling, but I guess it's back on). It's on my birthday, three days after I get home from Sweden. Hoping there's a bit of leftover thunder in the bike....

the Stare

An elaboration, for Patrick:

When you walk around Sweden dressed like I do, with pants too baggy at the ends, and severely unfashionable but really comfy shoes, and a worn-out haircut free of product, you tend to see a lot of the Stare. Sweden is the staringest country I've ever been to. And I've been to Italy. But the Italian stare is a whole different creature. The Italian stare, aka the male gaze, contains a message, and that message is "Take your pants off." But the Swedish stare is not a means of communication, let alone coercion. I don't think people even realize they're doing it. They certainly don't seem to realize that I can see them staring (from the other side of a cafe, for instance, or even like two tables over). It's as if they're looking at me absent-mindedly from the other side of a television screen; I'm an object of curiosity that has briefly stumbled across the placid scene of their day. It's not hostile. And it's not just me; I see them stare the same way at each other. Skinny jeans and all. Anyone they don't know personally, and particularly anyone who looks odd or is behaving unusually, is good Stare material.

If for example I'm walking along a seaside footpath and someone comes along from the other direction, staring of course, and I smile at them like a big American, their expression will snap from blankness into sheer panic. This is fun to see and I end up smiling at people a lot more than I normally would, just to get the reaction. About one in ten will smile back, and sometimes then we say "hej" to each other. And thus is civilization maintained.

guilty

I am spending the next three days in a Swedish prison.

It's nothing bad, I swear....

sweden in lists

Stats:

Days in country (so far): 20

Beers consumed: 2.5

Conversations with others: 3

Kilometers driven: about 5500

Kilometers yet to drive: 445

Cops seen: 4

Price of gas: 12.45SEK ($1.87) per liter (yep liter)

Odds of fainting while you tanka: pretty good

Things I love about Sweden:

- so many pretty little cake things

- their ice cream is way better than our ice cream

- same goes for the cheese

- tiny cars

- red barns decorated with antlers

- they tend to think I'm German or Canadian

- millions of soft, hidden trails through forests; this is the only place on earth I've ever felt like going running (it hurts less and no one can see me)

- cute houses

- we have 24Hour Fitness; Sweden has "Frisky & Sweaty"

(loosely translated)

Kilometers driven out of the way down sketchy roads in attempts to find MC-friendly humans, or just look at some bikes: 27

Number of humans (or bikes) seen at a motocrossbana: 0

(This one was really pretty! Lakeside setting, cool-looking terrain, not that I really know. Sign claimed it was open from 2pm to 9pm, and I was there at five minutes to 2. I waited, but no one ever showed up.)

Things observed on major highways:

- sixteen baby reindeer, just chillin'

- guy on a bicycle pulling a wooden canoe, pretty fast

- horse and buggy

- hundreds of spandexed people on roller skis

Things about Sweden that confuse or annoy me:

- roller skis

- pay to pee - seriously, free health care but it costs a buck fifty to take a leak at the train station?

- being tailgated constantly, for miles, going 30kph over the speed limit in the slow lane - effin' pass me already, you jerk!

- men in bright red jeans

- men with extremely high-maintenance hairdo's

- leggings for pants

- wildly varying parking costs, from 7 to 20 kronor per hour (40 to 120 for overnight)

- the Stare

- $9 beers - not worth it

- the Swedish approach to roadwork, which is, basically, "Hey, you're an adult. Your car is tiny. YOU figure it out." There is no hand-holding, none of those "you guys wait here while the other lane passes the obstacle, then we'll guide your lane around it." Oh no. They just kinda go about their roadworky business, do what they need to do, with their giant, stinky machines taking up the whole road, and it's up to you and the guy coming the other way to sort out who goes first. Actually I should put this in the Things I Love category. It's pretty advanced.

- tryck vs drag: all Swedish doors are either push (tryck) or pull (drag), like everywhere else, I guess. But you can't tell by looking. There are days when every single door I push is a pull door, and vice versa. It's fun to watch, like when new (or drunk) people try to leave Beulahland. Then after a while you start to think you've got it figured out. But you are wrong. The minute you're sure that every door in the building is a drag, you can bet the next door is a tryck. I suspect there is someone in a secret room, watching, with the power to change any door from tryck to drag at the push of a button. Just to mess with me.

Things that are cheaper than coffee in Sweden:

- caviar (red or black)

- RedBull

- brie

- peeing

Still, chances of doing without coffee for even one day: 0

Genius ideas I've had while driving 5500kms alone with my ipod:

Just one, actually. At the Husqvarna museum, one of the exhibits explained that after WWII, Husky served a function very similar to what IKEA does now (household modernization, advanced but uniform gadgetry, etc). So my brilliant thought was, of course: IKEA should make motorcycles! Imagine: they'd be cheap and almost weightless. Anyone could put them together. They'd fall apart after one year. But they'd be cheap! And so simple! Get on it, Ingvar.

Random quote from a museum plaque:

"Kerstin Petersson of Sweden had a collection of 71 Swedish cheese-dish covers as at April 1998." -- Guinness Book of World Records (Smalands museum)

Weirdest sight encountered so far:

Most baffling instruction:

(Okaaaay......)