Confessions of a Human Nerve Ending

FADE IN:    EXT.   MUSEUM-DAY A glass and brick building with sculptures made of bronze and metal arranged around a grassy lawn encircled by a sidewalk.    A middle aged white guy with a baseball cap walks into the shot, up to large glass doors and steps into the building. DISSOLVE TO: A small sign with a graphic of a the iconic "Hollywood" and below it "Southwest" announces the exhibit behind the double doors. Middle aged white guy is now standing in front of a movie poster for Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's 2016 Whiskey Tango Foxtrot , starring Tina Fey.   He writes in a small notebook, "I was watching Whiskey Tango Foxtrot , a movie based on reporter Kim Barker's time in Afghanistan, when I was jolted out of the moment with a landscape I knew.   So as the credits rolled I kept reading until it confirmed that landscape that was standing in for Afghanistan was actually New Mexico."   DISSOLVE TO: A wing in the exhibit. ...

Life is about listening.   Sometimes what life is saying comes at you in in strange ways.   On Friday, I was reading this story on Salon.com and it mentioned that few jazz musicians have the same clout as they once did.  Of the few who still draw considerable audiences, it mentioned Keith Jarrett .   I don't know Keith Jarrett, but I've been trying to school myself on jazz for the better part of a year now.   Since I'm relatively new to this jazz thing, I want to make sure I'm really listening to what people think of as "great."   With that in mind, I bought a book:   The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings .   Under Keith Jarrett they mention the album,  The Koln Concert as his best album (part of any enthusiasts' "Core Collection").   So, when I saw the album while perusing Mecca Records in ABQ, I knew I had to buy it.   Life was talking. The Koln Concert  (So, go ahead and ...

                 Required Reading In a Time Magazine interview, Sherman Alexie mocks himself when he says, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought back in 1987: What’s going to make me really economically successful? Poems about Indian guys. I’m a capitalistic genius,” yet the joke is actually real. Alexie has had a lot of success writing about Indian guys. Taking stories from his earlier works, he’s added a few, shaken well, then published this collection: Blasphemy: New and Selected Stories , and I'd call it required reading. Some of the characters draw on Alexie's own history: hydrocephalus, basketball, complicated father/son relationships, living on the reservation, and leaving it behind. Many of the characters appear in multiple stories; themes crop up again and again; and through it all you see his sense of humor, his struggles with alcoholism, and his willingness to tackle reservation life that mark this as clearly a bo...

I had the pleasure of watching Stanley Kubrick's 2001:  A Space Odyssey again the last couple of nights.  Its definitely been a few years, but I was actually surprised that the movie didn't really seem all that dated.   I know its a pretty celebrated picture, and totally agree that it deserves all the accolades its gotten.   There are particular sequences that are simply amazing.  For example, when David Bowman goes to disconnect HAL and the only sound is HAL's comments and David's breathing...the whole sequence is stunning, almost terrifying and sad:  "I'm scared Dave." I particularly like that the director relished in the vagueness of not only HAL's malfunction but also what Dave experiences at the end.   Too often we try and tie everything up...and quite often release director's cuts that answer everything...I'm looking at you Donnie Darko .   Film is a collaborative art and while I think there are good reasons for d...