Kill For The Sake Of Cali

GUNGA DIN was one of my favorite movies as a child. The cinematic version of Rudyard Kipling's poem about an untouchable bisthi or water carrier had elephants, fakirs, religious fanatics, comedy, thrills, and the horror of the Thuggees, who killed the innocent for their multi-armed goddess, Cali. "Swear by our mother Kali to be thrice faithful to her and to me and to our order and to all of us. Rise, our new-made brothers. Rise and kill. Kill, lest you be killed yourselves. Kill for the love of killing. Kill for the love of Kali! Kill! Kill! Kill!"

I always found this murderous request chilling, but mankind hasn't changed a lick since the release of 1939 GUNGA DIN.

The Taliban murdered over a hundred schoolchildren in Pakistan, a Louisiana mother killed her babies, Israel's IDF slaughtered hundreds of Gazans during the summer, a madman shot two cops in NY, the cops killed more, and it keeps on going on and on and on without cessation.

The horror.

As Joseph Conrad wrote in THE HEART OF DARKNESS.

"The horror."

Marlon Brando rumbled the words in APOCALYPSE NOW.

All I want is a little peace.

Is that too much to ask from the world.

One day.

And here's the end of GUNGA DIN.

The water boy has been shot and is dying.

A sergeant speaks over his body.

So I'll meet 'im later on At the place where 'e is gone -- Where it's always double drill and no canteen; 'E'll be squattin' on the coals Givin' drink to poor damned souls, An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din! Yes, Din! Din! Din! You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din! Though I've belted you and flayed you, By the livin' Gawd that made you, You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din

To watch a sequence from GUNGA DIN, please go to the following URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rEynYH-FNy8

THE MOLE PEOPLE

Ten year ago I resided in Pattaya, the last Babylon. My house was on a cul-de-sac. The garden hosted orchids and flowers and a mango tree. Butterflies fluttered before my window. Birds haunted the tree. I drove a motorcycle to the beach and spent my night with the demimonde of the Buffalo Bar.

I was arrested for copyright infringement and moved back the the USA.

I lived with my good friend, Walter.

A basement room.

I walked three blocks to the L Train, which I took to Union Square and transfere to the R train for a seven stop ride to 5th Avenue. This station has its own entrance to the Plaza Hotel. I worke at the Retail Collection. It was downstairs from Eloise's playground, the Palm Court. In the evening I reverseed the transportation process and fall asleep before 10pm most nights.

My total time above-ground per diem runs approx. 45 minutes.

I have become a subterranean like the denizens of the classic 50s horror film THE MOLE PEOPLE.

I loved that movie as a kid, especially the pearly white princess who couldn't live in the light of day.

And I was her in 2009.

Maybe not her, but the vizier of her father, the king of the Mole People.

Not a bad job for such a time of dismay.

ps there's also a video game by the title THE MOLE PEOPLE.

So there is life after the 50s for B-movies.

EL TOPO

I've been working with Mexicans at the metal shop for the last year and a half. As always I try to improve my language skills and I help them with English. The other week I gave Oscar, who has prevented my fingers from getting ripped off my lathes or pierced by drill presses, the movie EL TOPO by Alejandro Jodorowsky. I explained the surrealistic story line of a mad gunfighter or pistelero loco. Oscar had walked across the Sonoran Desert for three days. He finished his water within 24 hours. "On the third day I thought I was going to die, but I said, "I am not going to die here." I walked another day to the pick-up. Everyone was happy, because they figured me for dead. So I know surrealism, but you know what an el topi is." "A gopher." "Si, pero tam bien caca." "Shit." "Yes, because when you take a shit in Mexico, we say, "Se me sale le topi." Because the shit is like a gopher sticking his head out of a hole." "No way." "Si." We had a good laugh and Oscar took the film home. He never watched it, but we still laugh about 'el topo'. Mexicans have a good sense of humor.

CBGB's The Movie

I walked by CBGBs in the Autumn of 1976. I heard a band playing a cover of CALIFORNIA SUN by the Rivieras. It was the Ramones and I went to CBGBs every night for the next two years. Yes, I was a lucky man, because this movie can't ever come close to the truth of that era of errors, but Alan Rickman looks like Hilly. It was a beautiful time and I remember a lot of it. To view the trailer of CBGBs The Movie please go to this URL https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1ZNfaOpqKo&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Born Into This Charles Bukowski Movie

Born like this
Into this
As the chalk faces smile
As Mrs. Death laughs
As the elevators break
As political landscapes dissolve
As the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
As the oily fish spit out their oily prey
As the sun is masked
We are
Born like this
Into this
Into these carefully mad wars
Into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
Into bars where people no longer speak to each other
Into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings
Born into this
Into hospitals which are so expensive that it's cheaper to die
Into lawyers who charge so much it's cheaper to plead guilty
Into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
Into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes
Born into this
Walking and living through this
Dying because of this
Muted because of this
Castrated
Debauched
Disinherited
Because of this
Fooled by this
Used by this
Pissed on by this
Made crazy and sick by this
Made violent
Made inhuman
By this
The heart is blackened
The fingers reach for the throat
The gun
The knife
The bomb
The fingers reach toward an unresponsive god
The fingers reach for the bottle
The pill
The powder
We are born into this sorrowful deadliness
We are born into a government 60 years in debt
That soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
And the banks will burn
Money will be useless
There will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
It will be guns and roving mobs
Land will be useless
Food will become a diminishing return
Nuclear power will be taken over by the many
Explosions will continually shake the earth
Radiated robot men will stalk each other
The rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms
Dante's Inferno will be made to look like a children's playground
The sun will not be seen and it will always be night
Trees will die
All vegetation will die
Radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
The sea will be poisoned
The lakes and rivers will vanish
Rain will be the new gold
The rotting bodies of men and animals will stink in the dark wind
The last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
And the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
The petering out of supplies
The natural effect of general decay
And there will be the most beautiful silence never heard
Born out of that.
The sun still hidden there
Awaiting the next chapter.

Fuck Sasha Baron Cohen

There are few people more successful at movie-killing than Sasha Cohen and now teabag actor has been slated to play Freddy Mercury of Queen in a movie. Fucking horrors. Band member Brian May thinks that this is a good idea. Fucking wrong. Freddie is an icon. He was never a buffoon. All of Sasha Baron Cohen's films have been racist and homophobic. He is without any musical talent, possesses no visual similarity, and only harbors a desire to debase FM's memory for his fascistic humor. Then again I never go to the movies. And that's the beauty of being a hypocrite. Movie, music, money. And that's the truth when it comes to selling popcorn to fat people.