Warbot.

Minnie.

Eyeball.

Barbarian.

Mummy.

Happy Halloween from the Godsbody Children.

First Son: Laughing Devil
Second Son: Mr. Moustache, Mr. Beard
Third Son: Evil Grin
First Daughter: Sidelong Smile
Third Daughter: Surprise!
Second Daughter: Happy to Be Here

A Very Interesting Ethical Question

Getting ready to spend a few hours driving through the wilds of darkest Orange County, looking for something worthwhile to stick on the ol' iPod. Hmmm.... you know, after reading John Cleese's interesting comment about Christ over at the AV Club the other day, I'm reminded that he once did a recording of CS Lewis' The Screwtape Letters. And hey, this guy says I can download it from Audible.com! Um, or not. Drat. Amazon has it used but only on audiocassette. Bleah.

But hey! Here it is for free, and it's not even one of those naughty naughty torrent download thingies. SO: the question. The thing is out of production. Neither Cleese nor the people who produced it for him stand to make any more money from it. So is it okay to download?

Dear Art: please stop imitating life. Or at least, stop imitating my life.

So I'm watching Mad Men with The Wife, and Betty is confronting Don about the box of secrets, and Betty's saying something along the lines of, "You lied to me every day." And I stop the show (thank you, iTunes) and say, "Now that's not quite fair. Not telling someone everything isn't quite the same as lying. It's not like he's looking her in the face and pretending things are true that aren't." And The Wife comes back with, "But he's got a girl in the car, right outside! He is lying to her." Like the man said, "The past isn't over. Hell, it isn't even past." And suddenly I'm thinking about the crap we bring into even our most intimate relationships, the way that crap works to sour and erode those relationships, the smiling dishonesties we allow ourselves and HELLO CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TURN DOWN THE SELF-LOATHING? I'M TRYING TO WATCH A SHOW HERE.

Six.

Third Son asked for pie. Smart boy.

Today in Porn, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Edition

"The Loin in Winter." Really, New York Times? Really? Anyway, here's another profile of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, looking back on his... hm? Oh, sorry, must have dozed off. When you're 83, it happens.

Anyway, never forget: "Indeed, some of his long-time friends fret that some of the accomplishments they admire — creating a cultural icon (the Playboy Bunny), eroding racial boundaries (through the inclusion of black performers in his clubs), and supporting many feminist causes, including abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment — are getting lost. Mr. Hefner worries about it, too. 'We just literally live in a very different world and I played a part in making it that way,' he said. 'Young people have no idea about that.'”

Denis Leary relaxing in his sun room with Coco, a longhaired Chihuahua

Slideshow here.

Today in Porn, "The pornification of mainstream culture is so complete that it hardly matters" Edition

Hey Steven Soderbergh! You broke into the industry with the searing indie sex, lies, and videotape, which contained, among other things, a subtle meditation on the way filmed intimacy can be isolating and exploitative. Ha ha! Now here's you in the Times of London:

"Similarly, he rejects the idea that with [the casting of porn star Sasha Grey in his film The Girlfriend Experience] he has resorted to stunt casting, insisting that the pornification of mainstream culture is so complete that it hardly matters. For example? He confesses to being quite the consumer. In fact, he says, he has been known to storm out of hotels if they don't offer pay-per-view porn. 'I was in a hotel in Anaheim about five years ago, and after checking in I literally went down to the front desk and said, "I don’t understand, there’s no pay-per-view porn!" I called my producer and said, "I can’t take this, I’m checking out".' And I went to the hotel across the road. I think it should be in the bill of rights — when you’re travelling, access to pornography should be the number three thing on the list after clean towels and 24-hour room service.' He rolls his eyes upwards, to indicate the hotel rooms above, and sighs, 'They don’t have it here!'"

Sigh indeed! Joke's on us!

[Via Vulture.]

Dear James Cameron

You wanna bring a fantastical world to life? Do a movie about angels. No sentiment, no piety - go for the weirdness and the terrifying power and glory. The mother of all movie battles, indeed.

And just imagine animating this:

Camping in Ramona.

The Biggest Con...

...is the one where you lure people in with what looks like a globetrotting caper flick and winds up being the most religious movie of the year. God had to die (in St. Peter's Burg!) to set humanity free from the devil! Incredible. I do love me some Rian Johnson.

Lovely.

About 8 minutes in, the Pythons allow a 10-year-old girl to come up on stage and perform The Spanish Inquisition.

No no no no no no no no.

"And in a subtle, daring, but thoroughly effective move, Jonze has Max fearfully avoid the nameless, near-silent bull, who often appears alone and in the distance, unremarked upon."

Bull is the only one there with any wisdom, the only one there who can get a read on Max and understand that he needs to go home. Not that anybody asked.

In other news, I'm taking my own wild things camping. Happy weekend, everyone.

I wrote a story!

Baseball night in San Diego:

"It’s six o’clock in the evening on July 21, and the brilliant blue of the late-afternoon sky over San Diego is bleaching at the edges as the sun moseys toward the horizon, throwing the downtown buildings into gray relief as I speed toward them along the 94 west. Once I reach downtown, I turn left on Tenth, find a parking spot just shy of Market, and begin hoofing it toward the visible sliver of Petco Park, passing under banners hung from streetlamps and declaring the 40th anniversary of our home team, the San Diego Padres. The Franciscan Friar who serves as our mascot is, true to history, clad in brown; the banners, like (some of) the team’s current uniforms, are strangely, tastefully navy. I head south toward the park, on my way to see the home team take on the Florida Marlins, a .500 team mired in the middle of the National League East. It’s a beautiful night for baseball..."

Funny Papers

I don't remember how I discovered Bloom County. But when I did, I fell for it, hard. It did a lot to shape my sensibilities, maybe even moreso than Peanuts. My grandfather used to cut the dailies out of the New York Daily News and send 'em to me every week, up there in lonely old Upstate New York, where the newspaper was still carrying Henry, but not Bloom County. He always included a little note, usually something along the lines of, "These guys sure get into a lot of trouble!" I was so grateful.

Naturally, I bought all the collections as they came out, and now I've passed them along to First Son, just as the Nostalgia Machine kicks into gear and starts re-releasing the Collected Works. To mark the occasion, New York interviews Bloom County creator Berkeley Breathed here, and again here:

New York: With the exception of Dilbert and The Boondocks, there hasn’t been a culture-conquering newspaper strip in years.

Breathed: When the three of us [Larson, Watterson, Breathed] quit, it coincided with bad things happening in newspapers in general, and then the culture was suddenly awash in competitive humor. It siphoned a lot of the talent away. The future great cartoonists aren't sending their stuff anymore. They rightfully are working in graphic novels, or doing something else. It’s funny, you never hear anybody talking about it. People loved the comics over the last 100 years. They were hugely influential in popular culture, and they’re dying. They’re going fast. And nobody talks about it — it’s like they’re not even noticing. Along with newspapers, it’s this huge creative institution just disappearing into the ether behind us.

So Cubeland Mystic visited the other night...

...and brought with him the fatted calf. Several of them, actually.

And yet, the thought that popped up the next morning was about how much a man is defined, not only by what he pursues and embraces, but also by what he renounces.

"In some ways she was quite neurotic."

Friend of Godsbody Lindsay passes along this account of the hubbub surrounding the Little Flower's relics during their visit to London. I like it for several reasons, one of them being that there's not a lot of post-Christian hangover. The author is clearly not a believer, but he's not there to scoff. Christians are just one more curious set of people to be reported on, and I think that's a good thing. Christianity as dominant cultural paradigm seems to have had its day; perhaps now it will go back to being a movement with a message.

UR DOIN IT RONG.

TRULYMADLYDATING.COM is Conde Nast International's first dating site, supported by GLAMOUR.COM and GQ.COM, and created to unite glamorous girls with fashion-conscious GQ-reading boys to create matches made in style heaven.

Dear Conde Nast: you might want to take a look at this:



Just sayin'.

Today in Porn, "The goggles! They do nothing! My eyes!" Edition

SIGH. this news about Marge Simpson appearing in Playboy is depressing enough that I don't really have much to say, except yeah, Warming Glow is right on this one: "But the Internet trumped Playboy in a big way here. Go ahead, Google “Marge Simpson naked” or “Simpsons porn.” You will find a vast and disturbing tableau..." [NOTA BENE: He's being rhetorical there. Or at least I am. Please please please don't actually Google "Marge Simpson naked."] I don't usually include links to profanity on this here blog, but it's kind of hard not to feel like this guy.

Exchange.

Me: Where's my Tom's of Maine lavender deodorant?

The Wife: Oh, just use that other stuff I bought.

Me: Speed Stick Alpine Force? Have you smelled this stuff?

The Wife: It's a very masculine scent. I think you can pull it off.

Me: Thanks a lot.

*****

Third Son, a few minutes later: Dad, you smell weird.

Exchange.

So I went here last night to see The Maltese Falcon on the big screen under the stars, and it was wonderful (as was the slice of pizza I got here after the show). Sat with The Wife in a jolly comfortable loveseat, and everything was hunky-dory until this exchange:

Sam Spade (to Joel Cairo): "When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it!"

The Wife (to me): I'm going to use that line on you.

Yeep!

Kinglsey

"To digress for a moment: lecturers at Oxford, and doubtless elsewhere, could be divided into the hard and the soft, like cops. The hard men gave you information, usually about language. Old and Middle English, strong verbs, vowel shifts and fearful old poems like The Dream of the Rood and The Owl and the Nightingale, and what they gave you was likely to reappear in the relevant parts of the final examination. The hardest lecturer I ever heard, and the worst technically, in delivery and so on, was J.R.R. Tolkien, but you sat through him because his explanation of the anomalous form of 'hraergtrafum' was likely to be called for as the answer to a 'gobbet' on the paper. The soft men offered you civilised discourse with perhaps some critical interpretation and ideas about the past. The only reputable hard-soft merchant was C.S. Lewis, also the best lecturer I ever heard..."

St. Francis

Happy feast day, everyone. This is a good image for my current "Christianity is strange, even if it's common" kick. Just ask six-winged Jesus on a floating cross shooting laser beams from his wounds!

It's a wild ride.

Explodacated

Slow days in Darkest Wisconsin, apparently:



The Wisconsin Poet writes: Notice the sheer panic as Bob shakes his head back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and…then….resignation…and a peaceful calm come over him right before…Well, see for yourself…

Cue Robyn Hitchcock: ...and the balloon man blew up on my john...

Happy Feast of Little Flower!

A sweet little stained-glass I found in upstate New York and brought home for The Wife...

How to make Mr. Godsbody cry for entirely different reasons.

Four weeks in the Beverly Wilshire:



It did, at least, result in a very fine piece of writing: "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold":

"FRANK SINATRA, holding a glass of bourbon in one hand and a cigarette in the other, stood in a dark corner of the bar between two attractive but fading blondes who sat waiting for him to say something. But he said nothing; he had been silent during much of the evening, except now in this private club in Beverly Hills he seemed even more distant, staring out through the smoke and semidarkness into a large room beyond the bar where dozens of young couples sat huddled around small tables or twisted in the center of the floor to the clamorous clang of folk-rock music blaring from the stereo. The two blondes knew, as did Sinatra's four male friends who stood nearby, that it was a bad idea to force conversation upon him when he was in this mood of sullen silence, a mood that had hardly been uncommon during this first week of November, a month before his fiftieth birthday..."

How to make Mr. Godsbody cry.

Have him read this:

"This is a tale of wealth and rebellion in one American Gothic family. It begins and ends at the juncture of Lily Pond Lane—the new Gold Coast—and West End Road, which is a dead end. There, in total seclusion, live two women, twelve cats, and occasional raccoons who drop through the roof of a house like no other in East Hampton. Ropes of bittersweet hang from its frail shoulders. A pair of twisted catalpa trees guard its occupants, but nothing is safe for long from invasion by the bureaucrats and Babbitts. Least of all a mother and daughter of unconventional tastes who long ago turned their backs on public opinion..."

Have him see this:



Then have him see this:



First thought after seeing the Drew Barrymore-Jessica Lange movie: "Amazing. They made a film about two actual people."

Post-bawling bonus: Grey Gardens today.