Sunday, January 22, 2006

Tale of a Well-Rounded Utility Man

Good news, everyone...My buddy/bandmate Mike has recently come into contact with a manager who wants to help him promote his music. And yeah, I know a lot of people SAY that, but this is totally legit. In fact, Mike's already been given an interview at www.musicforte.com It's available for download right now, and I'm ORDERING all of you to go and check it out. Just go to the site and click on the link for M.U.F.O. Radio, located right below the log-in. (Don't worry, you don't have to join the site to listen.)

The guy interviewing him is kind of excitable and annoying (I cringe every time he pronounces Mike's last name "Lew-hann" instead of "Lew-hahn." His laugh is even worse.) But, Mike plays it cool and you can sense him becoming more and more comfortable as the interview progresses. Better still, they play lots and lots of his music, which totally rocks the casbah.

Hey Mike - Congrats, you big rock star! I love you, I'm proud of you, and I couldn't be happier for you. Better get used to these interviews, hombre. This won't be the last.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

So, What About Kids?


Of all the blog entries I've taken time to post here in my little corner of cyber-space, the most popular one thus far has been the post I did about my friend Cryssie's wedding. For up to three weeks after it was first posted I kept getting e-mails (mostly from female friends) saying they had really enjoyed it and expressing genuine surprise at all my syrupy little thoughts on love and marriage. You're such a romantic, J, they said. I could have cried. Then, once their praise was spent, most of them asked that oh-so-special question which inevitably follows any mention of marriage..."So, what do you think of KIDS?"

(deep breath) Oh boy...kids. Kids kids kids. Wow. Kids...It's a subject I've had to give considerable thought to in the last couple of weeks, thanks in no small part to a certain scare which those of you in my innermost circle are very well-aware of. (To those in the know: it was just a scare. Thank God!) But you know, even after all the thinking I've done, it's hard for me to say exactly what I think about kids, given that my opinion on children drastically changes depending on which kids I happen to be surrounded by at any given time. When my cousin Joseph was younger, for example, I used to think, Hey, this kid is pretty cool. If this is what fatherhood is like - having a little buddy to go off and do guy stuff with - then sure, count me in! But then again, there've been other times - usually during Christmas when I've had to spend time with my four paternal cousins - when I could literally feel my sperm cells committing suicide.

Naturally, everyone wants to give me the line about how "it's different when they're yours," but I have a very hard time believing that. As far as I can tell, the only difference between other people's kids and your own is that you don't get paid to watch them when they're yours.

Still, the voices of countless female friends echo within the dark recesses of my mind: "Aww, but J, you would make such a great dad!"

I would make such a great dad - That's a common misperception a lot of people have about people like me. There's an assumption, you see, that if you're child-like in some of your personality traits (healthy imagination, excitability, playfulness, etc.) then you must automatically be really good with kids. The awful truth, though, is that most kids who spend any amount of time with me walk away from the experience with little more to show for it than a few new, fun, and interesting words in their vocabularies. (See also: "That Time I Visited Katie's Class and Casually Said 'Bitch' in Front of Her 3rd Graders.")

But then, I guess fatherhood could conceivably bring something out in me that wasn't there before. I mean, just think of all the creative opportunities that would be opened up to me if I had a whole PERSON to experiment with! For starters, I could make up an entire language and raise my kids to speak it. (Imagine their surprise when they get to kindergarten and find that they can't understand ANYTHING the other kids are saying! *evil laugh*) And of course Halloween would come with a joy all its own -

(And you KNOW I would totally do that.)

But, unless my kids were just perfect angels (like Mike and Rachel's, for example):

Or visions of constant happiness (like Steve and Sarah's):


I just don't know that I'd have the patience or capability to put someone else's needs before my own 24 hours a day...And yes, I realize that kids require that.

The real Catch-22 to all this, as most of my intimates are quick to point out, is that notorious fetish of mine. You know, the one involving women who are - oh, how should i put this? - "in a motherly way." Lord only knows how many times I've gone into Mimi Maternity to get a catalog "for my friend." And Lord, how I'm waiting for Angelina Jolie's inevitable Vanity Fair photo spread six months from now. But, I can't be a voyeur forever, which means I'm eventually gonna have to knock somebody up...just not right now.

And yeah, I know I'm full of shit. I know I'm simply clinging to my dying young adulthood while being helplessly hurled towards middle-age. Eventually, my domestic instincts will probably take over everything and I'll actually look FORWARD to having mortgage payments and driving a mini-van. I'll be one of those obnoxious parents who never believes their kids are at fault about anthing. I'll write bedtime stories for them, which they'll publish and make a fortune on when I die. I'll be the "fun" parent and my kids will NEVER eat generic cereal.

But, until that day, I think my basic attitude towards children is best summed up with a line from Tori Amos' "Spark": "You say you don't want it again and again...but you don't really mean it."

Saturday, January 07, 2006

To Live and Die in Katmai

I would like, if I may, to direct everyone's attention to the brown object standing in the background of this picture:

See it? It's a bear. And no, this picture was not created using PhotoShop. It's actually a still frame from the newly-released Lions Gate film, Grizzly Man - a semi-documentary about the life and death of bear enthusiast Timothy Treadwell. Treadwell spent 13 summers living among the grizzly bears of Alaska before he was finally attacked and killed in 2003.

I've been intrigued with this movie ever since its incredibly short run at New Orleans' Canal Place Cinema late last August. (The Canal Place Cinema, by the way, needs to hurry up and re-open.) Thanks to Katrina, I didn't get a chance to see it on the big screen, but I kept up with the official website (www.grizzlymanmovie.com) and read everything I could find concerning its subject matter. Finally, after four months of waiting, I was able to get it on DVD at the end of December. (Oddly enough, the copy I bought at Best Buy was the last copy on the shelves. I must not have been the only one waiting for it.)

So here's the story: Timothy Treadwell was apparently a very troubled soul - your typical recovering alcoholic and drug addict - until that fateful day when he encountered a bear in the woods and was surprised to find that it didn't attack him. (Bears, I've learned, are not predatory animals.) This proved to be a life-altering experience for Treadwell, and it wasn't long before he was spending his summers in the Alaskan wilderness, camping among the grizzly bears and shooting over 100 hours of video footage with them.

There's a scene in Grizzly Man where filmmaker Werner Herzog flies over the areas where Treadwell camped, and I for one found it pretty amazing that anyone would want to camp in an area so far from civilization - especially if they were going to be surrounded by grizzly bears. But, that's kind of what the movie is about.

Far from being a nature film (because honestly, would I watch a nature film?) Grizzly Man focuses on Timothy Treadwell and his motives for going so far into the wilderness. According to the man himself, he was there to "protect the bears from human threat." But, as the movie points out, Treadwell was camping in Katmai National Park and Preserve, which means the bears were already being protected. (It would be like me going to Paul B. Johnson State Park in Hattiesburg, MS, to protect the ducks.) Thus, the more you watch, the more you begin to realize that this wasn't really about conservation or protecting any animals. Instead, it was escapism on a grand level. Treadwell felt rejected by the human world and retreated to Nature, where, for four months at a time, he could more or less make-believe he was the only person on the planet. He had Paradise all to himself - kind of like Adam before God got the big bright idea to create Eve.

As Grizzly Man wears on, you see Treadwell becoming increasingly paranoid that outsiders are trying to get inside his Eden and bring harm to him and the bears. It goes without saying, of course, that the only person he had around to talk to about all this was his video camera. Not surprisingly, that's exactly what he does. This footage is what makes up the majority of Grizzly Man; and I must say that it's really kind of sad at times, watching him cry and vent into the camera...especially when you stop to realize that he's in the middle of nowhere, essentially talking to no one. Not even the bears he spends so much time with seem to pay him much notice. By the time the movie's over you're left with somewhat mixed emotions about him. On one hand, you could say he's more than a few fries short of a Happy Meal for putting himself in harm's way so eagerly (some have argued that Treadwell had an obvious death wish.) But, on the other hand, I think you really have to sympathize. Here was a troubled guy who had found some kind of peace and meaning in life, but whom unfortunately just didn't have the sanity to hold it all together.

As movies go, this is one I highly recommend - if only because I've never seen anything quite like it, and because it's so unusual and true. The interviews with Treadwell's family and friends were obviously well-rehearsed, but that was intentional on the director's part - an extension of one of the the film's main themes: the distinction between image and reality. If you're up for something a little different, do yourself a favor and check this one out. Or, if nothing else, at least watch the trailer at www.grizzlymanmovie.com (it's right up there with "Man on the Moon" and "Pink Flamingos" on my list of all-time best movie trailers.) The fact that I'm writing an entire blog about it should say a lot about how much this movie has stuck with me.


* An interesting sidenote before I sign off this morning: I checked out the Katmai National Park and Preserve website to see if it makes any mention of Timothy Treadwell (from what I understand, Treadwell's relationship with the Park Service and the people of Alaska was not exactly a friendly one.) As it turns out, there's zero mention of Treadwell himself. BUT, if you go to the list of rules the park issues to its campers with regards to bears, you'll notice one rule that sort of stands out from the others: http://www.katmai.national-park.com/hike.htm#bear Gee, I can only imagine who inspired that one.