Ashes to Ashes

The concept of David Bowie dying, at its core, is total bullshit. It's literally incomprehensible to me.

I discovered David Bowie late in my life. I don't think I ever listened to him beyond the rare bits of "Rebel Rebel" that came on the radio. For a long time, he was one of these artists I had heard about that faded into the white noise that was the American classic rock catalog. Bowie was something dinosaurs and weirdos talked about. Now Zeppelin, there was a band. . .

That was wrong of me.

The Venture Bros. changed that. Wes Anderson helped, too.

Actually, now that I think about it, Zoolander might have been the first time I ever consciously thought "Oh, that's David Bowie."


Looking at how packed my iPod is, how many albums I've bought, how many references I've made in my writings, or the things I've been inspired by, it's hard for me to think that there was a world where David Bowie wasn't in my life. And now there is.

Calling the man a talent or an icon or whatever seems to sell short what he did. It packages up too neat for me, and besides, there are plenty of smarter people out there doing a better job of that than me. I just look at the man and his work, flaws and all, and I have to marvel at them. After all, how many world heroes are there running around that successfully went through a phase as a Nazi?

That's the power of Bowie. At least it is to me. 

As an artist, as a kook, as a fascist, as an actor, as a collection of all of these things. While he might be dead, David Bowie will stay with us. As we all mourn the man that was, we can mourn him together. We can remember the moments he enlightened, the parts where he inspired us. It's a cliche, but you don't know what you have until its gone and there was so very much David Bowie left for us. People like this don't come around very often and as terrible as it is for somebody, even somebody that we have never met, to leave us, they never truly go away. There's a piece of them inside of us that can't ever go away, that death can't ever take from us.

They have left us with so very much.

And without being glib, without being cute-- Let's end this on a high note. Glum is not what Bowie brought to the table.

Internetless in Montana: Road Trip Journal Part VI

Our streak of decent hotels was broken last night. God, was it ever. Out of desperation or fear or some other base emotion, my dad settled on a place called the "Big Sky Inn." I cannot implore you enough: Do not spend the night here.

Everything was wrong with it. Cheap towels. Cheap beds (which I'm pretty sure had a plastic guard on them, you know, the kind they put on the beds of kids who piss themselves). Pilows with less give than the average cardboard box.Then we couldn't even get to sleep properly because we'd be woken up by a train high balling it on the tracks across from us.

Sometimes you gotta eat some mud to make the custard stand out. That's a saying right? I don't know. I'm running off of not a lot of sleep and a minor hangover. I'm satisfied enough with just being able to form words.

We're headed into Wyoming. Tomorrow (or today or the next day, depending on when this gets posted) we'll be in Cody. With any luck we'll be staying at the Irma, which, for those keeping score, was established, like the rest of this town by Will Bill Cody.

Until them, I'm just going to try to hold this meal down and forget that I ever hard the name of the Big Sky Inn.

High Point of the Day: Dad managed to snag a pair of antelope heads for a god price at a place in Billings. That's all wel and good for him, but on the plus side, that means I get an antelope in my room. Finally. We also hit up a bar, the New Atlas, which was pretty cool. It had not only one old-fashioned back bar, but two-- that and a ton of taxidermy. Not a bad place to drink away the fear of falling asleep in a place not nice enough to be an Indian burial ground.

Low Point of the Day: I've already been over this. Now let us never speak of that place again.

Waldoism of the Day: “Their slogan should be 'Did you die at the Big Sky.'”

I Just Realized that My First Dog Didn't Go to That Farm Upstate

There's a Philip K. Dick quote that I can't remember the source of where he is haraunging Robert Heinlein's lack of creativity. He cites a story he read in the newspaper where an eighty year old couple recently got married and said that this was the kind of tenderness and humanity that Heinlein, with his space captains and militarism could never achieve. I have to think he was right to a certain extent, but then again: Blade Runner. It's hardly fair.

(Of course he later was supported financially by Heinlein, who greatly respected the grand holy fool of classic science fiction, which is a turn of events that proves that some stories can go unwritten by a man as great as Philip K. Dick).

So, then I saw this on Yahoo's main page. These kind of stories aren't just limited to imagine scrimage battles between sci-fi authors. Romance still happens despite all the horror show that modernity seems to be churning out on a daily basis.

Then I saw the depressing fact: This guy is one of 11 US survivors of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
 
Eleven.

There were tens of thousands of these men at one point, now there's less than a dozen. And one of them has cancer.

I've got to have a lie down.

I remember telling an ex-girlfriend of mine why I wanted to take a World War II tour of Europe and as I was talking it out I realized that someday, within my lifetime, every one of these guys is going to die. Same with Holocaust survivors (who, even as children aren't that much younger then the men who fought in the war, especially when they start hitting the 100 years mark). The last survivor of World War I died within my lifetime and that war, like this war, is going to lose all of its witnesses. It's going to decay into the Past in a very real way

While we're never going to forget what these events stood for and it's stories like the ones above that remind us that there is still plenty of life left in these people. Their story isn't over. And yet, the past is an endangered species and we're going to watch all of it slide away if we give it long enough and Jesus Christ what the fuck is that about?

A series of moderate reactions to the film "Young Adult"

*I heard a lot of good things about this. I love Patton Oswalt. I love Charlize Theron. I like Diablo Cody quite a bit. This should be fun.

*Oh no, I'm fucked.

*Shit. I think I dated this chick. No, wait. I know I dated this chick.

*I can't help but feel that if anybody besides a woman wrote Juno it wouldn't get the same amount of hate. No, wait, fuck that. I know if a man wrote that movie people wouldn't care about Juno being too clever.

*This movie is really good at making my feelings hurt. I haven't paused something so much since I watched the original version of The Office.

*Guide me Christopher Hitchens. Thy will be done. . . what's that? You want me to drink more? Alright, you're the not-a-ghost!

*Oh, I see it-- This whole movie is a young adult novel itself! Except that in all of this post-modernism it has replaced being a disposable piece of art with imbuing in you the need to accept death.

*Jesus Christ.

*Jesus Christ.

*I think Diablo Cody understands that Nightmare on Elm Street is bullshit. The real nightmare is going back to high school. I seriously have that nightmare.

*Oh God, please, Young Adults, I'm sorry for renting you! I'll never do it again! Just please stop! I'll go to Church! I'll stop drinking! Please just make it stop!

*Oh Jesus. I just. . . I called a lot of things in this movie and I. . . oh God. She's got a reason for all of this. Fuuuuuuuuck.

*Best garage door reveal to a different world in all of cinema. Put that one in your book, academics.

*It's not over! No! You can't. . . You can't do this!

*I never thought the scene in Metal Gear Solid where Solid Snake is whooping the shit out of the Cyborg Ninja and the Cyborg Ninja screams "Hurt me more!" would have a legitimate equivalent in a film, but I found it. It's this movie. It gets it.

*Oh, the sister is in love. Right? Stop hurting things in me, movie! Stop finding new organs to poke needles into!

*I like that the quirk in Oswalt's character is an actual thing that actual people like him do instead of the normal rom-com bullshit where someone is, like, a dog therapist or a cheese salesman or a lawyer or whatever.


*Wait. . . is this is ultimate treatise on modern America? It just might be. That might explain a lot.

*I never have wanted a boner looking at Charlize Theron less than I have right now.


*I . . . What did I learn here? I need to talk to my friend who is into S&M. He must know what this feeling is like.

*I just want to feel clean again.

Thinkin' 'Bout Sherpas