By now, many if not most of you have already been made aware of – if not have already read – the extensive February 16th article from Esquire entitled Roger Ebert: The Essential Man. A reference perhaps to Leonard Cohen’s “I’m Your Man,” the song that Ebert purportedly played repeatedly while in his hospital room after one of the many cancer surgeries that he’s had to endure since his first one in 2002, the article is a moving and bittersweet account of a man whose contribution to the world of film is immeasurable.

I first became aware of Roger Ebert in the late ‘70s, when he and Gene Siskel, his partner for over 20 years went into national syndication with their Sneak Previews show on PBS.

For me, their show was essential viewing, intelligent discussion about film, and not just the mainstream movies of the day, but also the obscure underground art-house films that could only be viewed in some of the larger cities across America. I was going to Berkeley high at the time, was a terribly shy teen, and spent a lot of my free time going to movies – usually by myself. We had the UC Theater, one of the early Landmark Theater screens, and they played a different double feature pretty much every night. I could be found there three or four nights (or days if on the weekend) during any given week. Each week however, I would always try to make sure that I was somewhere with a TV nearby when Sneak Previews aired. As much as was possible I would never miss a show.

Ebert’s commentary – his words – about film were an essential part of my filmic diet, a veritable classroom doled out in weekly portions, something to be relished. Regardless if I agreed or disagreed with either of the critics, their discourse would invariably spark the critic within me. Their weekly discussions about various films and their relative merit helped to make me a more critical thinker, and ultimately a more astute and critical viewer of film. Keep in mind this is a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his work as a film critic, back in 1975, years before he was on TV!

In 1981, I moved to Seattle. The following year Siskel and Ebert moved to network television, and extended their reach to mainstream audiences. I continued to watch Siskel and Ebert review and debate movies until Siskel’s death in 1999, and continued to tune in to Ebert and his new partner Richard Roper who was his co-host until 2006. My love for film never subsided, and throughout, Ebert was a constant voice, one that I did not always agree with, but one that would invariably give me some new perspective to consider. I thank him for that.

Now his battle with cancer has taken his ability to speak. His entire lower jaw has been removed: The bone that was once there is gone. He cannot eat or drink; he has no voice, no spoken voice anyway. As a writer however, he is more prolific than ever, and since 2008 (when in the midst of a particularly bad fight with cancer) Ebert has been chronicling his experiences and thoughts in a blog that has – as of the writing of the Esquire article – surpassed half a million words!

In the article, Ebert writes: “When I am writing, my problems become invisible and I am the same person I always was.” I read this, and I read it again. I am stunned. He is 67 years old. He has devoted his life to the things he’s loved the most, has honed his craft and continued to sharpen his creative self, and when dealt with a blow that would take the juice out of pretty much anybody I can think of, he finds the sweet nugget and savors the little thing that makes it special. His cancer is in a state of remission, and hopefully it will never return. I cannot imagine what it would be like to go through the ordeal that Roger Ebert has had to endure, but through it all it appears that he has managed to keep his focus, and somehow he has managed to find joy in the things that make his life rich.

This is not a lesson on film, but it is most certainly a powerful lesson in life.  As trite as it may sound, I think we can all do better to learn to let the petty shit go so that we can more fully appreciate the small things that make our lives rich. I will certainly do my best find inspiration in the sweet nuggets.

Read Ebert’s Response to the Esquire Article

See Ebert’s 323 (and counting) Greatest Movies of all Time (alphabetical)

I recently discovered a Flickr pool entitled Looking into the Past, devoted to combining old B&W photos of locations and buildings from the past that then get dropped into the same location in the present day. This project was apparently inspired by one Jason Powell whose initial idea was to pay homage to another Flickr collection, Michael Hughes’ Souvenirs project. This has become now become something of a global phenomenon with over 50 photographers around the world contributing to the project. Below is a small selection of a few that I thought were particularly inspiring.

There are a few collections that curate a subset from the entire Flickr pool making it easier to see a quick “greatest hits” selection:

• Paulo Canabarro
• Wired UK
• Ed Rabbit

I barely even know what to say about this. My dear friend Sharon posted it to my Facebook in response to my Wayne Coyne architecture post and I was both humbled and blown away. This is a mosaic of 84 total photos combined to comprise this final majestic final image. This tree is over 1,500 years old, and is 300-feet tall. I continue to be floored by the power and grandeur of this photo, and have little doubt that it will be the longest photo to ever post on this blog. Stunning. Can you find all six people?

There are more photos, a video on the making of this photograph, and an interactive time-line tracing the history of the tree rings and what was going on historically in the world at various points on National Geographic. Their Explorer series will have an episode, Climbing Redwood Giants which will premiere September 29 at 10 p.m. ET/PT on the National Geographic Channel.

I’d like to say that I’ve been a long-time follower of this award, but I’d be lying. The ISEVC (much easier than typing it out each time) is sponsored jointly by the journal Science, a nonprofit international science society, and the National Science Foundation (NSF), and is intended to “captivate and engage the viewer by revealing the hidden meaning and intricate details of our world in visual form.” The winners have just been announced! The competition is in its seventh year and is equally focused on science as it is on the visual arts. The criteria for judging the entries include “visual impact, effective communication, freshness and originality.”

The winner (pictured here on the February cover) was for Branching Morphogenesis, “an installation made from more than 75,000 interconnected cable zip ties, [and] illustrates the predicted forces generated by human lung endothelial cells as they form networks within an extracellular matrix over time.” As a example of the challenge, NPR explained “let’s say you want to know how human lung cells interact with their surroundings. You could take a picture of what you see through the microscope…what if you took 75,000 cable zip ties and used them to create an 11.5-foot-tall sculpture that represents those interactions in three dimensions?” That was exactly what Branching Morphogenesis did.

The first time I saw the caterwauling ex-Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, was when the inimitable Scratch Acid came to The Central back in 80…what? 84? 85? Their self-titled 8-song debut masterpiece had been released, and pretty much seemed to be the only record that anybody was listening to at the time. The Seattle music scene was enamored beyond words, so when Scratch Acid finally hit town, it was utter mayhem. utter. blissful. mayhem.

That was the only time I ever got to see SA, but I did manage to catch Jesus Lizard on a number of occasions, most recently at the Henry Fonda Theater here in Los Angeles this last October (15th, 2009). They delivered the goods more than I ever would have imagined, but I’m not going to review that show here because I already promised my friend Cara that I’d write about it for her Ritual Room blog, and I am a man of my word.

Below is a 12-minute mini-documentary about David, entitled I’d Rather Be Anywhere Else which was shot by the Swiss band Ventura this January and posted by the good folks at The Drone. The piece kicks off with Yow commenting on how he’d like the Jesus Lizard to be remembered: “we were a band that never really got anywhere, meant a lot to a few people who don’t know much about anything”. I’m guessing that your fans and readers may beg to differ (we can disagree over a few drinks if he’ll ever let me interview him for RocknRollDating). Yow further talks about getting an agent and becoming an actor, avoiding mirrors, his relationship with his father and doing a public access cooking show with Steve Albini. That’s something that I’d like to see!

Once you get the video started, hit pause to let the stream buffer a bit as it seems to choke a lot. After you’ve finished, make sure to check out the “Bonus” video of The Jesus Lizard performing “Seasick”.

This is a story that will likely ruffle some feathers, and anger more than a few old friends. That is my no means the intent, but it’s about Skin Yard’s old singer, Ben McMillan who very sadly died a couple of years back due to complications from diabetes. The one piece that is rarely mentioned however, is that his diabetes was alcohol induced, something I had never heard about until I spoke with one of Ben’s doctors during the period when he was in a coma several years before.

I know that it is politically correct to not speak ill of the dead, and while I do not even consider the following story to be “speaking ill,” I know that  it’s not uncommon that people tend to remember those who have passed in a selective light. Often, after our friends have left us, friends who – like the rest of us – had their good and bad qualities, suddenly seem to only be remembered for their positive attributes. I suppose it’s human nature, but let’s be honest: we all have our faults, and we all have our damage to varying degrees, and I for one hope to be remembered for both my positive and negative attributes when I finally leave this world. I’ll be the first to recognize my weaknesses and shortcomings. It’s part of who I am. It was also part of who Ben was, and was certainly part of Ben’s magnanimous charm. Disclaimer aside, please read on.

* * *

I think I can say in all fairness that Ben was an alcoholic. At the very beginning of every tour that we ever did, his first order of business would be to have us stop at a store to buy at minimum, a half case of beer. It didn’t matter whether it was day or night, whether we’d even hit the freeway out of Seattle yet, we’d be stopping at a 7-11 or a Safeway so he could get his road fuel, and usually before we were even out of the parking lot, he would have cracked his first beer. Which led to the next one and so forth…within 4-5 hours he would have finished all 12 bottles, which would have been fine, however usually within the first 45 minutes of the trip, Ben would beg for us to stop because he had to piss, which also meant that we’d have to stop every half an hour just so he could empty his bladder. This was – in my mind – unacceptable . We all fussed about how it was not  necessary that he drink beer the entirety of the tour, and that it was not realistic to stop on average every half hour for the next 45 days on the road, particularly on those days when we had a 10 hour drive in front of us. Ben however, was not willing to make that particular compromise, and we were not willing to accommodate his desire to have us stop every damned rest stop and gas station along the freeway just so he could relieve himself. So we came up with a “solution.” Ben would be responsible when we first stopped for his half rack of beer to also grab an empty Big Gulp cup with a top, and that would become the receptacle for his frequent need to empty his bladder. My preference – being the inflexible taskmaster that I was then – was still that he just not drink in the van, but the rest of the troops searching for the path of least resistance, said “ok.” Ben would slowly fill his portable 40 ounce plastic cup doing his best as we were blasting down the freeway to get it all in the cup. A lid was essential to the whole operation. The piss cup was stored along the floor in the recessed area next to the sliding side door, and every 2 or 3 hours, when we had to stop for gas and snacks, we’d spill out of the van and Ben would take care of emptying the contents of the cup. Some of the time however, the cup would be completely full, and we’d be nowhere near a stop, so Ben would unroll the passenger window and toss the cup to the side of the road, and he’d grab a fresh cup at our next refill.

The heater in the van had stopped working during one of the colder tours that we embarked on. It was November and we were at the tail end of our trip. Our last show had just finished in Chicago, and it was bitter cold outside – somewhere in the high 20s – low 30s. The show was not one of the highlights of the tour. It was reasonably attended, but we were tired, and ready to get home. After getting paid, Ben managed to secure a full case of beer. He was elated. Ben also managed to score a quarter gram of crystal, which was essential as we were going to attempt a straight shot drive – 42 hours more or less non-stop from Chicago back to Seattle, with all of us but Ben trading driving shifts. The crystal was essential, because we needed to be chemically stimulated for this particular leg of the trip. Two needed to be awake, the driver – which was going to be me through the night – and the other – Ben – to keep the driver engaged. Everybody got bundled up wrapped from chin to toe in our sleeping bags trying so stay awake in a van with no heater boring along the dark freeway in the freezing night. It was hellish. I’m driving, and Ben is in the passenger seat, equally mummified with one of his arms out, beer in hand and a half full cup of piss on the floor next to him.

About an hour away from Chicago, Ben had managed to fill his cup. We were all still awake and barely staying warm as we careened west along the freeway as fast as our poor van was able to go. We had almost two days of driving ahead, and we would do our best to make tracks as best as the van would take us. Ben unrolled the window to toss the cup, and the biting ice-wind rushed into the cab of the van. The rest of us were all yelling for him to hurry up and toss the cup fer fuckssake. I slowed down a bit to ease the force of the air rushing in. Ben half unraveled himself from his sleeping bag and tossed the cup out the window.

The events of the next few seconds all occurred in ultra slow motion.

The cup got caught in the air and did two quick 360 degree spins before the lid from the cup became unhinged and the entire contents of the Big Gulp came rushing back through the open window covering Ben from the top of his head down to his waist which was mostly sleeping bag now soaked in his own urine. I saw the splash coming in and actually swerved the van as if to avoid an animal in the road. I never knew if it made any real difference, but the leading edge of the wave missed me by literally an inch or two. I was spared, as was everyone else in the van, now all howling hysterically, completely aware of what had just occurred. Ben was sitting there in his seat, hair completely dripping onto his coat and further drenching his sleeping bag, which he had little choice but to keep on because it was so incredibly cold. It reminded me of that classic National Geographic photo of that monkey in the hot spring, his wet head half frozen and the look on his face pissed off and indignant. That was Ben. Not just covered and soaking in his own piss, but mortified and frozen as the temperature crept in to his hair and his clothes and into his damp stinky sleeping bag. The howling laughter went on for minutes. In retrospect this was perhaps the grossest story in our arsenal of tour stories, but at that particular moment, it was the definitive “told-you-so,” the ultimate cosmic payback.

The worst part though, was that we was still had another 41 hours to go.

I’ve been a fan of The Flaming Lips since Hear It Is came out in 1986. Skin Yard was a band barely in its infancy, and suddenly here comes this out there, neo-psychedelic band out of Oklahoma of all places obscure. Their live show then was nothing like their show as it’s evolved over the last fifteen years, but the music was undeniable and we had the great fortune and delight to be able to open for them on more than one occasion. The thing that struck me then and struck me again this last year when I got to interview Wayne (Coyne) for RocknRollDating, was the fact that Wayne may indeed be the sweetest and most genuine front-man you’ll ever meet in rock. He was as gracious and seemingly without ego in 2009 as he was in the late ’80s. As a result I remain a fan of both the man as well as the music.

Fast forward to last week when Gizmodo posted the most awesome gallery of pics from Wayne’s newly remodeled mid-century palais, a feast to the eyes, and a spectacular showpiece from the remarkable Fitzsimmons architectural firm. The design sensibility seems to draw from the same playful and adventurous nature of the Lips’ music, and is truly unique and unlike anything that I’ve seen before. I had to share and I invite you to take a look as well:

The Gyrofocus Fireplace

A Living Room or Something Like It.

Looking from the Other Side

The Patio – LOVE the Rock Inlay

The Space Bathroom

Design-Milk has a few extra pictures as well.

For those of you who know me well, you know that Tool and King Crimson are among my very favorite bands…as in ever. I’ve seen both bands several times and would barely hesitate to see either again when given the opportunity. Imagine then my excitement – in 2001, while I was still living in Seattle – when it was announced that King Crimson were going to be supporting Tool for the west coast portion of their Lateralus tour. I bought my tickets immediately. At about the same time, I was laid off along with 192 other people from Real Networks, the company where I had worked for the previous two and a half years. The economy was in about as bad of shape as it is now, and many of us were finding it impossible to land any paying jobs, but I bought my ticket anyway.

The night of the show I ended up selling the tickets, as I was feeling particularly panicky about my financial situation, so I never got to see that particular pair-up. Looking back, I still regret that decision. Yesterday however, I became aware of the rumor that Adam Jones (creative mastermind and guitarist for Tool) and Robert Fripp (King Crimson founder and creative mastermind in his own right) may resume collaboration on a record that they apparently started 5-6 years ago. Tool’s last record, 10,000 Days came out in 2006. They have always been a slow working band, but between Maynard’s current project, Puscifer, and the possibility of this collaboration finally coming to fruition, one has to wonder if Tool has another album somewhere in their future. Either way, the thought of Fripp and Jones releasing a collaborative work is one that I would happily shell out for.

Yonder from Emilia on Vimeo.

My friend Al introduced me to a friend on his on Facebook (Scott) and so I did the obligatory digging around which led me to his blog, Destroy Your Computer. There I found an exquisite and inspiring piece on animation from a woman in Germany named Emelia Forstreuter. She uses Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects, Cinema 4D and Flash to create some of the most inspired work I’ve seen in a very long time. I am stunned, hope you are too. Fullscreen it!

Over this last weekend, I finally got around to seeing Avatar in 3D, and then yesterday the Oscar nominees came out. Unsurprisingly, Avatar was one of the picks for the most coveted of the Academy awards, the Best Picture. I understand why it was nominated, and I expect it may likely win. I also expect that Cameron may well win for best director as well. That said, I do not think it or he deserves the win. Avatar, which managed to win both awards at the Golden Globes, did not win either award at the Directors Guild (DGA), the awards event that gave the nod to The Hurt Locker, the film that deserves to win hands-down.

Sure, Avatar raked it in at the box office, already having earned the unbelievable sum of over 2 BILLION worldwide. Hurt Locker meanwhile earned only $12 million, a pittance by comparative standards.

Bottom-line: Cameron knows how to make big splashy mainstream Hollywood films that rake in big bucks. He is responsible for the Terminator franchise, one or two of the Alien movies, and another Oscar winner Titanic, a movie that I – in the minority –did not much care for. Cameron is Hollywood royalty. He spends boatloads money making grand epics and earns it back ten-fold…and the Academy loves grand epic films with high box office receipts…so who cares if the story isn’t there to back up the spectacle? This is not always the case, but it’s happened too often to overlook. Past cases-in-point: A Beautiful Mind, Gladiator, Braveheart, Forrest Gump, Dances With Wolves, and of course Titanic. Go ahead and call me a blowhard, but I think that these movies were all beautifully polished turds, albeit polished turds with impressive budgets.

Now don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed Avatar, I really did. I do not put in the category of a turd – not at all. I think that Cameron created a beautiful and remarkable world on Pandora. I appreciated the astonishing attention to all the production design, the visual effects, makeup, and the great attention paid to every last detail, but when you’ve got 4+ years and a reported $280 million to spend, I expect as much…and I was duly entertained. I do have issues however. First with the story. The Avatar concept was interesting, but was nothing even remotely original. If you haven’t seen it yet on Facebook or elsewhere, the now-classic comparison between Avatar and Disney’s Pocahontas pretty much nails it. Face it folks, it’s Technicolor fluff with guns and lots of big explosions. Another web phenomenon, but also a really strange and questionable choice, was that of using Papyrus as the font for the titles and subtitles. It was a very distracting disconnect, especially for those of us who have a deep fondness for font in design.

I found Cameron’s heavy-handed, hardly transparent and self-righteous political correctness with his obvious analogies to Native Americans (getting back to Pocahontas) and their “connection to all things living,” a people in touch with the natural energies of the world, manipulative. His obvious “green” messages about energy dependence vs. a purer Pantheist view of the world (which I in fact embrace) were smug and sanctimonious.

The piece that really surprised me however was how the films starts first with our common enemy, the evil hawk of a general, engaging in a non-provoked aggression against a lesser race for their natural energy supplies (sounds familiar, right?), which of course we rally against, feeling politically correct ourselves [look up The White Man’s Burden]. Our hero, a jarhead with the muddled sensibility of a blue-collar Jersey construction worker has apparently experienced a spiritual awakening of sorts, and comes back to save the day (as the natives are clearly incapable of saving themselves). A seemingly unintended message, we are left with a subtly patronizing act of noblesse oblige, wherein the (enlightened) white man has to come in and help the savages out. The subtext is one of superiority, that we must help those out that cannot help themselves, because they are inevitably inferior and ignorant.

Hurt Locker on the other hand, was powerful in the most visceral sense, in the deepest emotionally impacting sense. It is a film about real brutality, and is portrayed in such a way as to make you feel like a fly on the wall observer. It takes hard looks into the damaged psyche of soldiers in war, and should be included in the list of the great war movies along with Gallipoli, Paths of Glory, Full Metal Jacket, Platoon and The Deer Hunter. It is a beautiful film dealing with the stark and upsetting realities of war, and is an undeniable piece of modern-day classic cinema…and it deserves to win the best picture Oscar along with Katherine Bigelow for best director.

This battle between the Epic Goliath that is Avatar against the smaller, but ultimately more powerful Hurt Locker is of even greater and gossipier interest as Katherine Bigelow and James Cameron were once married. What’s more, it it’s entire 82 years of existence, The Academy has never given the best director award to a woman. Speaking of political correctness, giving the woman the award would be the “right thing to do,” but more than that, her work is simply more deserving. The 82nd Academy Awards airs on March 7th.