LaurieWrites

Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland was a speaker here today. He's one of the most interesting and weird people I've ever seen at an event like this. Just a few quotes:

"I cut my teeth on disaster."

"I can’t believe I get to make shit up for a living. Blahblahblahblahblahblahblah, people talk!"

RE: YouTube: "I think it’s great that all these people who are at home doing nothing are at home making marshmallow animations."

"I’m just waiting for some asshole in California to invent whatever it is that replaces the book.
Books are the one uncopiable medium. There is still no one satisfying replacement for paper."

"Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings. Everytime a cell phone goes off in an auditorium, God takes an angel, rips his wings off, and chucks the bloody body down on the ground." Then he talked about a phone ringing while he was speaking, and how he stopped, and made everyone call themselves, so they could hear the sounds of all the phones in the room ringing, in a "Cellphone Sonata." This is the greatest things I've heard all day.

When asked by an audience member what he'd do if he ever took a "pot vacation." "I would rent a kayak, a big red kayak...Just get close to water, anything that involves water."

He kept saying, "Oh no, is this going to go on YouTube? You can't relax at these things anymore because you don't know what's being recorded and what'll show up on YouTube." So true. So weird. It was great. I think I need to read his books now. If you're equally in the mood for some weirdly divine comedy, here's his website. Check out his self-penned biography - no press release here. It's funny.

Now I just sat through a half hour of the just gross Tucker Max because I forgot who he was until he started talking and then I just thought I'd hear what and now a very sweet, earnest man who teaches a class on arts entrepreneurship. His premise seems to have something to do with Lord of the Rings (Frodo, in particular), Joseph Campbell's bliss theory, the Matrix and its application to Jesus Christ, Star Wars and the "rescue from without" as a correlate to Steve Jobs saving Apple, the apotheosis of becoming the ideal (??!!??), a "showdown ordeal", Van Halen ending up two million dollars in debt after their first tour, and the web. It's making my headache way worse, and I've never seen so many confused geeks staring up at a screen in my life. He just asked for questions, and no one has any, because it's not polite even in these circles to go, "Oh, umm, yeah. What the fuck?" So now he's showing us a music video that he directed for a song called "Ready to Rise" by Vaughan Penn. Appeared on Laguna Beach, I think? Hmm.

I'd have rather sat for two more hours and just watched Coupland eat and also narrate his lunch. I think that would have been way more interesting.

The long way

I made this my movie weekend, thrilled as I was to not have to go to work at all, or to be somewhere else trying to have fun, thinking about how I should be at work. That's a major drag, by the way, and I don't recommend it. Work sucks in general (I much prefer play, to be honest) but when it's hanging over my head, the suckage goes forth and multiplies.

After "Stranger Than Fiction," which is detailed in sickening detail below, I let someone else pick the movie. My friend Jeremy came down yesterday and he chose "Copying Beethoven," which really didn't do it for either one of us, I don't think. The music was great, but Ed Harris annoyed me, and the story was weak. Plus the cinematography created an atmosphere that made early-1800s Vienna resemble my memories of Three Mile Island from the endless newsreel of my childhood. Bleak. Grey. Ick. And maybe that's what Vienna looked like then, but in that case I hope they had some early substitute for antidepressants, cause cry me a river...it was unbearable.

Today I saw "Shut Up and Sing," which I was really excited about, and it was fabulous. I loved it. It made me cry it was so good, although I'm a Dixie Chicks fan, so I'm not exactly unbiased. Or not at all unbiased, depending on how you look at it. I'm not a country music fan in general these days, and certainly not part of the base that burned and steamrolled cds (overreact much?) or held their kids up to say "Screw you" outside of their concerts after the remark about George Bush essentially led country radio to wipe them off the map. I just think they're really talented women. "Taking the Long Way" is arguably the best album released in 2006, and although I was a fan before, now that they're writing their songs and expanding their reach, I like them even more. (I really like them. I'm sorry. I know, it's gross.)

I wrote a paper for a Language and Politics class this past summer about the controversy, and got really into researching the (literally) thousands of words that were written in every possible media outlet about these women. When Natalie Maines said at a London concert that, "We're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas," the day before we sent troops to Iraq, she got scourged in red state America overnight. Toby Keith put a picture of her on the screen at his concerts with Saddam Hussein, and her head on the body of a toad, and it's cool. His free speech is okay. Hers is not. In the film, she's shown playing one of the first shows after the controversy started, and she heard people booing. "Go ahead, you let it out," she said, "because I support free speech." And that's really what goes on the chopping block when people aren't allowed to voice an opposing view.

In any event, it's a really well done film. Stephen Hunter's review in the Post was harsher on Natalie than it needed to be. Again, I'm biased, but I hardly think his characterization of her as a "blowhard" is anything that the women shy away from, or that needed to be pointed out by the filmmaker in the way he suggests. Natalie's opinions and freedom in expressing them started the whole business in the first place, and she references her big mouth several times in the movie. It's no secret. I wonder if the same depiction would be given if she were a man expressing himself in the same way.

The core of the film for me came almost at the end, with a bit in which Martie Maguire says she just wants Natalie to be safe and happy with the way things turn out. I actually found Martie to be the most compelling person in the film. She's obviously dedicated to the music and to the life she and her sister have created from the time they were pre-teens, and watching her it was easy to see what was threatened by an incident that grew beyond what any of them intended or planned. Her statements at the end were also the only time any of them are shown crying. Her defense of Natalie was honest and heartfelt, and I really felt throughout that these women were a team, no bullshit, which is refreshing in an industry and unfortunately a world where that often doesn't seem to be the case. I wish them luck, because I think they took the harder - and longer way - round with all of this, and would that more of us spoke up in whatever venue we find ourselves in, large or small.

Charlie et la Chocolaterie

Okay, so I normally don't get this interested in movies. I love movies, but I don't wait around for them to open, don't go to midnight showings as a general rule...and truthfully haven't seen a movie in the theatres in months. It's very sad, I know. But "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" is one of my favorite films of all time. I'm very interested to see what Tim Burton has cooked up for this one, and I love Johnny Depp, of course. I saw this poster walking through the mall last week and actually got all little-girly excited about it. It was kind of fun. And take THAT where you can get it, I say.

Cool Warners Bros. France poster

Warner Bros. USA film site. This one kind of scares me, because the kids look a little too cookie-cutter. Let's just think positive...and hope that whatever's been done to Johnny's teeth doesn't bother me so much that I fixate on it throughout the film. My guess is that my heart may well always belong to Gene Wilder on this one.