Zombie Lapdance

Movies, like any artistic medium, will always have a darling of the moment. The best contestant for that category right now is mumblecore.

At this point I am a minor expert in mumblecore. I have watched The Puffy Chair, Baghead, Mutual Appreciation, and Funny Ha Ha, and I did not particularly like any of these movies. I kept watching them one after the other, waiting for the good one, but the good one never came.

And that’s when I realized that mumblecore is a film movement without any good movies. It’s a critical favorite, it gets long articles in local alternative weeklies, but nobody I’ve talked to particularly likes it. Mumblecore has all the trappings of something that critics ought to like, so they feel they ought to. And that’s what I’d like to explore.

You’re probably wondering what mumblecore is. First, it’s probably made by one of a small community of young (actually young-ish) filmmakers including Andrew Bujalski and the Duplass brothers. It’s going to be filled with young (or young-ish) hipsters, it will be shot on shaky hand-held DV under guerilla on-site conditions, there will be loose or non-existent narrative structure which leads to anti-climax at best, and most of the dialogue will be ad-libbed, hence the "mumble" in mumblecore. There’s a brilliant moment early in Baghead where a snide young filmmaker tells a festival audience "Do you worry about what your lines will be every day when you get up in the morning? No you don’t." It’s a vicious and beguiling moment of self-clarity, and it’s almost enough to justify the entire movie.

In short, the genre looks like someone took Lars von Trier’s Dogma 95, Slacker, a box of home movies, and the obnoxious hipsters from that bar on the East Side and made an entire genre.

Critics feel that they should like it because A.) It’s anti-Hollywood so that gives it the outsider-art/underground mystique, B.) It’s not terribly ambitious so you can’t criticize it for not achieving its goals, C.) It wears its pedigree on its sleeve, aping previous underground film styles to the point of plagiarism, D.) It is the necessary outcome of all that talk about how the proliferation and affordability of portable DV technology is going to democratize film, and E.) We’re all supposed to think that everything those hipsters do is cool.

What people fail to realize is that the democratization of art is the worst thing that has happened to America in the past twenty years. The idea that anyone can pick up an artistic medium and make something valid that they can then subject on another human being is a baby-boomer misconception that sprung from rolling around in the mud and doing acid.

In reality, subjecting your art on someone is a crime and it makes you a terrible person. It takes ten years of diligent practice and a lot of talent to make worthwhile art. America is suffering from guy with a guitar syndrome. We’re all sitting out on the patio while inside the proverbial coffeeshop self-styled singer-songwriters are plunking away about their feelings or something else totally worthless.

That’s what mumblecore is. People have been talking so long about how DV tech is going to revolutionize film that they’re willing to embrace anything that isn’t youtube videos of children high on painkillers. Mumblecore is only incrementally less amateurish and about as entertaining.

If there is one area where mumblecore excels, it’s at its portrayal of a listless generation. Every mumblecore movie is filled with hipsters who have no vitality and no articulation, which is accurate if nothing else. If only mumblecore movies themselves didn’t emulate that inarticulate vacuity.

So, mumblecore, I’m talking to you. Try being more interesting. An invaluable part of the creative process is asking yourself "why would anyone want to be subjected to this art?" Being entertaining is a good first step, but if you can’t manage that, at least try saying something of importance.

Mumblecore does show some promise. Baghead could have been a great movie if it had been edited a little tighter and built to an emotional climax. Anti-climax should be a rare event, not the rule.

In summary, try a little harder, mumblecore. We’re still waiting for the emergent voice from that great sea of cheap DV.

I’m putting together the material to do another quiz contest like my previous picture quiz, only this one will be about taco meat. I have about half the pictures ready to go, so it shouldn’t be that much longer.

This time I’ll see if I can find a prize that people will actually want (instead of cock-fighting videos).

Did I ever show you what I made with the gourami paste? I made a soup with lots of cabbage and rice.

The gourami gave it a taste like being smacked in the teeth by a barrel of fish guts.

Slightly, but not precipitously, less fishy tasting is these fried and breaded charal.

A fun snack to munch on, I could swear I could feel the crisp little eyeballs pop on my tongue.

I bought this Bubu Lubu bar at the cash register of a Mexican grocery.

It has marshmallows, chocolate, and a gummy filling.

Here’s a cilantro-sesame cracker with visible cilantro sprigs just under the surface.

From Phoenicia Mediterranean grocery, a yogurt drink, an herb-stuffed croissant, and a pastry whose name I forgot the moment after I mispronounced it to the man behind the deli counter.

On impulse I bought a bag of napalitos pre-cut from the HEB. What they don’t tell you about cactus, is that if you let it sit, a clear mucus drains out of it and leaks out of the bag.

Some barbacoa from a Mexican grocery. Like most of the grocery taco plates, the meat was sitting in a steam tray for an indefinite period, so it doesn’t have the fresh taste of a taco cart where everything is kept in a refrigerator and fried on the grill to heat it up.

This product looks like a corndog, but it is in fact a breakfast sausage on a stick wrapped in a pancake.

It was as amazing as it sounds.

I discovered a new meat behind the counter of the Fiesta carniceria. The label read: "Blood and tongue/ Morcilla".

It looked like pre-cooked sausage, so I tasted a little. It was kinda like a summer sausage, but with that blood sausage smell and taste. But it was when I fried it that the magic happened.

The morcilla melted into a glistening wad of congealed blood, dotted with gelatinous hunks of tongue. I couldn’t stop eating it, it was that delicious! I devoured about a pound of it in less than a day.

I hope you’ve had a chance to listen to the pseudopod production of my story "Hometown Horrible" and also read my explanatory blog entry.

A common response to "Hometown Horrible" is: "I wish I could actually read the fictional stories you mention here." Personally, I have little inclination to make those stories real. But that’s not to say that other people shouldn’t be allowed to do so.

I’ve just announced on the Pseudopod forum a public invitation to other authors (and ordinary civilians for that matter) to write within the Helmut Finch mythos.

That’s right, you have my OFFICIAL permission to use the concepts, characters, or names therein free of charge or restriction. In the spirit of Lovecraft, it’s the least I can do. (It would be nice if you gave some sort of props to Helmut Finch somehow, but that’s hardly necessary.)

If you do write a Helmut Finch story, or a sequel to one, or just a Helmut Finch-inspired story, you should try to get it published in a prestigious and lucrative market (such as Pseudopod). If you can’t do that, I happen to be the editor of two short story markets, Space Squid and Revolutionsf.com, and I would be happy to help you out.

And either way, you should let me know about it so I can link to it from this blog. Happy writing, should you be so inclined!

A little bit ago I fluffed out my podcast feeds, largely with science-based podcasts. I figured I wasn’t as smart as I ought to be, so I might as well work on that. Also, I’m getting so old and uncool that I literally believe that learning is fun.

The Jodcast(RSS) is the official podcast of Jodrell bank. "Jodrell" is one of those words that sounds awesome when someone with an English accent says it, but every time I say it, it just sounds weird and clunky. The Jodcast is an amazing all-around topical astronomy resource. There’s a part in the beginning where a woman who sounds like a futuristic computer (but is merely English) reads a list of the recent astronomical discoveries. Later on, a man who sounds exactly like a retired English astronomy professor, and is, goes step by step through everything an amateur observer will be able to see in the next two weeks.

The 365 Days of Astronomy(RSS) is partially a massive tribute to the international year of astronomy, and part conceptual prank. Every day there’s about twelve minutes of audio content focused vaguely on astronomy. Sometimes it’s informative and inspiring, and sometimes it’s massively asinine. The intro music to this is very loud and very goofy. Should you fall behind on the 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast and have to listen to this music at twelve minute intervals, you will quickly discover if you have a psyche that is easily broken or one that has already descended into madness.

The Astronomycast(RSS) has two personable hosts, a dude who asks the dumb questions for the sake of the listeners, and a woman who is an astronomy professor in Illinois. Usually they devote each episode to a single topic, generally something interesting and informative, like the space elevator, crazy people with pet cosmology theories, the sorts of equipment you can buy as an amateur astronomer, or the ins and outs of grant applications (which was surprisingly engrosssing).

Know Your Meme(RSS) is a video podcast and apparently a spin-off of the Rocketboom podcast (which I generally find dull). Every week or slightly more often, they analyze the origin and structure of a different internet meme. Generally I’ve never heard of the subject memes they discuss, but it’s fascinating to watch people pretend that internet memes are fascinating.

Okay, now I diverge from the ostensibly smart podcasts into the less-smart. But we’ll ease into that category with an NPR podcast, All Songs Considered(RSS). This is a twenty minute or so weekly podcast that plays the sort of music that NPR people like. Sometimes it’s hip like Ira Glass, sometimes its dorky like Ira Flatow. Sometimes they broadcast from the Bridgeport Folk Festival (aren’t those folk people dead yet?).

I’m not sure if I’ve told people to watch Stranger Things TV (RSS) a sci-fi/horror anthology vodcast. I’ve been waiting to see some decent content come out of the reduced cost of digital video and special effects. This is it.

And although I have not actually listened to this podcast yet, I’m sure it’s awesome and you owe it to yourself to be a part of the ongoing quest for excellence which is the Drabblecast’s Super Animal Deathmatch Competition(RSS).

Once again, I have cleared out the submissions and caught up on all the necessary correspondence. If history repeats itself, there’s going to be a period of a couple weeks that I read every sub as it comes in, before I stop keeping pace and there’s forty unread emails in the account. So now is the time to send in that zany piece of fiction that no sane market would ever accept!

That being said, there has been a sudden and inexplicable tightening of the acceptance rates. Here’s how the process works in general:

*Step One, I read through the incoming emails and sort through the stories that I would like to see in the zine, and the ones that I wouldn’t. This ratio is about ten to one. The stories I approve I ask to hold on to while I send them to the other editors.

*Step Two, the other two editors read through the list of stories I have forwarded and they each get the right of veto.

In practice, this means that three human beings have to all agree that a story is awesome before it makes its way into Space Squid. Historically, about a third of the stories I have passed onto the second round of reading make it into print. I’m sure there’s some sort of statistical significance to that.

The drawback of this system is that stories have to fall into a narrow Boolean range of editorial overlapping interests and tastes. Too often this means that a story with a fart joke gets through while an edgy and experimental story gets put aside. Not to say that I don’t like a good fart joke, I would just prefer no more than one per issue.

Recently, the editorial review system has been unusually stringent. We’ve had over seventy submissions for the current issue, and so far we have accepted ONLY ONE STORY. This is the sort of submission/acceptance rate you would expect from a much better publication.

What I’m trying to say is, if you submitted and didn’t get in, submit again, because we need your work! At this rate we won’t be able to put out a new issue until July.

On a separate, yet tangentially related issue, Space Squid is looking to expand our work force with some volunteers.

This operation is getting to the point where it’s too much work for just three people. For instance, it took me four hours to read through the slush pile yesterday. That’s four hours I could have spent eating deep-fried eels.

There’s some areas where we could use extra help. For instance, folding and stapling. We’re going to have a folding/stapling party soon. I have committed to making pizza, because I’m just that kinda guy.

If you want to lend a hand, get your foot in on the Space Squid operation at the ground floor, then you should send me an email at the Space Squid address:
squishy ((at)) spacesquid ((dot)) com
And I can put you on the invitation list. Hope you can make it! And keep writing those Space Squid stories!

In an earlier entry I talked about a chess game that I was playing with my co-worker Kevin. He works the night shift and I work the day shift at the bakery, so we play the chess game on a blackboard next to a derelict oven. Every shift or so, we make a new move, writing down the move in algebraic notation and changing the chalk drawing by one square.

The last game started in December and we finally brought it to a close after more than fifty moves in September.

In this entry I would like to give you a blow by blow synopsis of the game.

1. f4 … e6

I’m using Bird’s opening. Kevin may be attempting a novel opening.

2. d4 …

In real life this move looks like this:

2. … d5
3. Nf3 … c5

Kevin attempts to undermine my pawn structure by passing on the outside. He wants me to take his pawn so he can develop his bishop into a sweet position. But I ignore the bait….

4. e3 … a6

The a-pawn is developed to prevent an attack on his king from my bisop.

5. c4 … Nf6
6. Nc3 … Be7
7. Bd3 … 0-0
8. 0-0 … Nc6

Move 8, and there’s been no exchanges but plenty of development. There’s still the weird standoff with the pawn structure, so the board is getting pretty crowded.

9. Pc4xd5 … exd5
10. Ne5 … Nxe5
11. Pf4xN … Ng4

Finally, some bloodshed.

12. h3 … Nh6

I get a free pawn advance and Kevin’s knight backed into a corner.

13. Qc2 … g6
14. e4 … dxe

This is the part where I should have taken the pawn, but instead I went for an odd exchange.
15. BxN … pxd3
16. Qf2 … Qxd4

This is where the last board left off. I’m two pawns down, but I have his Rook dead in my sights.

17. BxR … QxQ+
18. RxQ … BxB
19. Ne4 … Be6
20. b3 … Bh6

At this point our scores are ostensibly even. But Kevin has a pawn in the D column that is passed and two ranks from promotion. Plus he’s got a pair of bishops working for him. Kevin said that about this point he was expecting me to exchange bishops for knights, leaving me with a knight for his bishop during the endgame, which he said was an advantage. Now that I know that, I’ll have to try that next time.

21. Rf3 … c4
22. Nc5 … b5
23. NxB … fxN
24. a4 … Rc8
25. bxc … bxc

Kevin is taking advantage of the earlier trade that left me higher on major pieces, but left him with a superior number of pawns. In essence, he has a pair of linked, passed pawns that are backed up with his two remaining major pieces, the rook and the bishop, which also have a doubled-up control of the pawn’s target square of c1. My two rooks aren’t going to be much good for breaking up his pawn structure.

26. g4 … c3
27. Rxpd3 … c2
28. Rd6 … p=Q+

The pawn promotion forces me to lose a rook. Normally this would be a game-ending loss, but I already have other plans.

29. RxQ … RxR+
30. Kg2 … a5
31. RxP … Kf7
32. Ra6 .. Rc7
33. Rxpa5 … Ke6

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Kevin has to deal with the threat of two passed pawns on my side. Only in this case, my pawns are not close to each other, and he has his king and a bishop more than I do as he hunts down the pawns.

34 Kf3 … Rf7+
35. Ke4 … Rf4+
36 Kd3 … Rf3+
37. Ke4 … Re3+
38. Kd4 … Rxh3

I bring my king forward to bolster the passed pawns, while Kevin chases it around with a combination of rook and bishop doubleteam.

39. Ra6+ … Kd7
40. e6+ … Ke7
41. Kd5 … Rd3+
42. Ke5 … Bg7+
43. Ke4 … Rd4+
44. Ke3 … Rxg4

I push my e-pawn two squares, but at the cost of two pawns and my king forced back to where he can’t support the promotion effort.

45.. Ra7+ .. Kf6
46. d7(e7) … Ke7

And this is where my pawn inexplicably jumps one square to the left. I have no idea how that happened. It probably wouldn’t have affected the game, but it sucks that after months of tension and nail-biting chess play that I would make a mistake in transcription. It probably wouldn’t have changed the outcome, but it’s a tarnish on a long game.

47. d8/r+ .. KxR
48. RxB .. Rxa4
49. Rxh7 .. Rg4
50. Kf3 .. Rg1
51. Kf4 .. Ke8
52. Ke5 … Rf1
53. Rg7 .. Re1 +
54. Kf6 … Rf1+
55. KxP
Draw offered and accepted.

Or in the real world representation:

As much as I would have preferred to beat Kevin in payback for all the losses he’s inflicted on my chess ego, a draw is a reasonably satisfying outcome. It means that there weren’t any dumb mistakes, and not too many smart mistakes either.

We’ve already started on a new game, and he’s already got me in a slightly compromised tactical position. I’ll keep you updated on this fast-paced game as the situation develops!

So expect another entry in 2011.

I’ve opened a new front to my food frakking: The carniceria.

If you’ve ever gone into a Mexican grocery, you’ve seen the piles of meat behind the glass at the back of the store. As it turns out, you can purchase that meat, usually for one or two bucks a pound, and eat it in the luxurious privacy of your own home. It’s like having a taco cart in your kitchen!

The easiest taco meat to adapt to home use is pastor marinado. You fry it, and you have a taco. This particular batch of meat permanently stained my wooden spoon a distinct shade of red.

Here’s home-fried taco al pastor from a different carniceria with a cilantro salsa of my own devising.

And I think I shall always love milanesa. Here’s some milanesa fried with Japanese bread crumbs.

And made into a torta using some focaccia.

A recent taco meat discovery is deshebrada, or the way that all the taco stands spell it: desebrada. The word means "torn" or "shredded" in Spanish. Here is a taco desebrado from the infamous taco cart on East Sixth. You know, the one near Liberty Bar.

The salsas that come with it are the hottest things I’ve ever been served. The salsa was so hot that it gave me hiccups that were more painful than the burning in my mouth.

I also ran into a version of desebrada at the Taco-Mex taco window on Manor. It’s an odd little establishment. At one time it was the storeroom of a laundromat, but they cut a window in it and made it a taco stand. The taco in question is called tinga de res, a shredded beef suspended in gravy.

It reminded me of stuff I ate in the elementary school cafeteria, and not in a good way.

So when I ran across some desebrada at the carniceria, I could naught but buy a pound of the meat and attempt my own imitation of the taco cart experience. The first step was browning the meat, and then simmering it for several hours.

Then I shredded the beef fibers with a fork.

The next step is fairly questionable, but I did it anyway. First I fried the desebrada, and then I added some of its own stock (from the first step) to soften it up, and then I added flour to the stock to make it into a gravy.

Julia had some of this, and she agreed that my own parallel evolution version of tinga de res was pretty good.

Innsmouth Free Press just posted an interview with me to compliment my story "Beneath the Red City."

I never truly realized how cogent and insightful I am.

I’ve had a hotdog at Casino el Camino on Sixth Street before. And like all finer dining establishments, they have more than one variety of hotdog on the menu. This time I went with the chilidog.

I had this during a sparsely populated happy hour right as the kitchen opened, so I got my order in a shockingly prompt twenty minutes. You will notice that the dog comes with plastic utensils. This is because the sloppy heaps of chili and nacho cheese have far exceeded the structural load-bearing capacity of the bun. There wasn’t a single portion of this dog that could be consumed with the hands without causing a catastrophic slopping event. But submerged beneath the semi-liquid topping was a very serviceable hotdog, a meaty and thick tube of processed pig.
Casino el Camino Chilidog – Grade A minus

There’s been a proliferation of upper-end franchised burger joints in recent years. In general their menus are limited to burgers and fries, but often they will also offer a hotdog. Five Guys Burgers and Fries is a good example.

One of Five Guys gimmicks, is they offer free peanuts to customers waiting for their order. Twenty pound peanut boxes are left sitting open around the restaurant, with cute little scoops inside. While this is a nice touch in theory, in practice it means that the seating area is covered with a fine powder of peanut shells like the elephant cage at the zoo. The hotdog itself’ is split open lengthwise and grilled, which makes for a particularly flavorful dog with a crisp skin. It would have been a great hotdog experience, except that a hotdog, with fries and a drink, cost me ten dollars. This is at least a third more than any human ought to pay for this meal.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries dog – Grade C plus

Another newcomer on the burger joint scene is Mighty Fine Burgers. Their menu offers a "chopped chilidog." I saw that and thought, "hey, chopped chili must be some pretty chunky chili." Wrong. It’s the hotdog which is chopped.

I imagine that somewhere in the Mighty Fine food preparation area there is a steam tray filled with a goopy jumble of chili and little disks of hotdog. Whenever someone orders a hotdog it only takes a second to poor a ladle of the slop into a bun. The ladle that went into my bun was about 75% chili and only 25% dog. No doubt this particular dish was invented with eight-year-old boys in mind, but for a grown man the mutilated weiner is an emasculating insult. It’s too bad, because there’s some pretty decent ingredients in there.
Mighty Fine Chopped chilidog – Grade C minus

I was trying to bike through the Mueller development this evening as the sun set.

For non-Austinites, the Mueller development is the old Austin airport which was de-commissioned and then subjected to a stunning array of political and economic forces which transformed the site into a Frankenstein hodgepodge of development and unused space.

The geniuses at Misprint Zine referred to the Mueller development as "a grotesque Truman Show social experiment." But other than the hyper-precious high-density track housing, featureless park space, and incongruous prairie land, there’s some very fascinating derelict urban space.

I think there’s still some cars in the long term parking lot.