Post by Jack of Blades on Apr 25, 2009 12:48:03 GMT -5
A flickering of static. Fragments of past documents, historic events considered disposable, interrupt the new, pertinent material. Footage of a deceased rabbit and the maggot hive banqueting on its carrion chest. Scopophilic recordings of Mr Harrison, next-door neighbour to the Blades residence, driving his fist into the front teeth of Mrs Harrison for breathing on his prized golf clubs. Their perpetuity now gone; the tape stocking new delights, new occasions, new happenings. Memories soon to be forever lost like tears in a rainstorm…
In living Skyler Striker's life, the perfect happy family life, there was one feature that Jack of Blades was looking forward to the most: home movies. A reader of postmodern thought, Blades appreciated the bizarre station of the family camcorder. The way that it both distances yet engrosses its user in the activity being recorded. Think of holiday photos. You didn't really see the Eiffel Tower unless you have photographic proof of you standing in front of it, utilizing the laws of spatiality for the purposes of novelty so it looks (to the kind of the people who find 'The Big Bang Theory' funny) like you are actually holding the Parisian structure. In one hand nonetheless! Gyuk, gyuk, gyuk…To experience anything, we must have documented it (See: ROB LOWE'S SEX VIDEO). To live our lives, we have to press record.
Static turns to fade. New footage. Skyler's life as lived by Jack…
A corridor filled with people. Walls lined with battered grey lockers. Decoration consists solely of posters speaking out against drugs, sex and drugging people to have sex with them. Parents and their progeny occupy different positions. The former find themselves placed behind a table and banner; a banner with the words 'P.T.A. Bake Sale lettered in comic sans-esque scrawl with the traditional sales tactic of the occasional backwards letter employed. I don’t care what anyone says: Dyslexia is cute!
As is Dysphoria, who finds herself behind the aforementioned table dolling out a vast array of home-made (read: store brought) cakes to the braying pupils of Jade Striker's alma mater. As the parents stare on bemused at her choice unsavoury attire when dealing with children. To be fair to the former courtesan, she is wearing a very homely apron. The problem is she isn't wearing anything else. Some would argue that this is the very reason why her queue is so large and winding in number. But those who know the secret behind her most acclaimed recipe, a recipe that was firmly in practice at this bake sale, would dispute such an assumption.
Small Child Who Won't Ever Grow Any Taller: Can I have another Tabaccookie?
Dysphoria: Sure. Here you go.
A few tuts from fellow P.T.A. volunteers as the carcinogenic treat is passed from Dysphoria's slender fingers to the chubby digits of the junkie child. Suppressing her withdrawal symptoms, the child quickly fills her hodge with the biscuit. Nicotine and pixie-stick sugar cocktail together as they course around her system creating a high that would be lost on anyone of a legal age. You may disagree with Dysphoria's methods but at the very least, the school basketball teams will get their new uniforms…
The school scene, replaced by a baseball team of the little league variety. Aurally, it seems as if the cameraman was attending Game Seven of the World Series (if such an event actually exists and isn't just the product of an Englishman confusing the sporting heritage of America). A tiny girl with pigtails, perhaps only eight years young, swings her first strike. Tremulous ritualistic litanies rain down from the bleachers.
Of course, such sounds do not derive from the usual crowd of disinterested parents but rather the collective of rabid Philadelphian smarks that Jack of Blades has brought along in support of Jade Striker’s little league team. Second swing; second miss. Filling the bleachers in their droves, the smarks show the correct decorum for such an event. Third strike. She’s out.
The Uncouth and Unwashed Wrestling Fans: You fucked up! You fucked up!
Tears from the Teeny Tigers star player (her bat connected with the ball slightly about two months ago). More truculent abuse is hurled at her. More static. A new scene; a new moment of Jack’s new life forever committed to celluloid.
Mahogany. Biscuits and tea. An ecclesiastical meeting for those of an ecclesiastical mindset. People of the congregation coming together to discuss the next best way to disseminate the Lord’s message. Smoke emanates from the teapot as Ethel's cup is replenished with Earl Gray. Smoke emanates from Jack of Blades' dying cigarette as he takes a last desperate inhalation of nicotine hoping to stave away his iconoclastic compulsions. The congregation is deep in discussion: from Leviticus to Damascus. Church: the Sunday refuge of the happy family. Church: the remaining opposition to the American Dream.
Holy-Than-Thou Holy Man: …We need America to re-find its spirtualism. Sarah Palin helped but we need to get out there. We need to sprea—
Jack of Blades: You want more people to listen to your litanies. Then go for the traditional ‘shame’ route. Start spreading scriptural opprobrium like a muck-spreader slings manure i.e. indiscriminately and everywhere. Then watch the adulterers, philanderers and blasphemers cue up as if you were handing out free diamonds and blowjobs.
Like dominoes, the rector's collection of fine teacups fall to the ground and shatter. Shock and awe. Buzzing static. Events have run dry; the filmic ledger waits to record new memories…
Familial masturbation. That's all they are. Home movies, photo journals, holiday snaps. Sundry and nothing else; designed for retrospective enjoyment. The belief is that a camera adds colour.
Well it can, if you use it properly. Take Powell & Pressburger's 'Peeping Tom', a film in which a pervert's voyeuristic fantasies are allowed to flourish through the medium of film (Also see: ROB LOWE'S SEX TAPE).
With a camera, the only thing that exists is what is captured in the frame. Through the power of Kodak, that family barbecue in ’96 exists in time without all the trauma, back history and scandal that surrounds it. It can catch the moment when Billy dropped his chicken steak on the floor and everyone laughed at him. It can't catch the common knowledge that Mr Henchcliffe used to touch his daughter in the bathtub. Pictures allow the sundry to become perfect. As a hero once said about the phenomenon of public journalism in the face of catastrophe:
"Now, of course, I can completely understand why you'd wanna look through a viewfinder if you found yourself caught up in the middle of something like this. Seeing it all through a lens would somehow disconnect you from the misery of what was happening and make it seem less real…"
Evidently, the same applies for the tragedies of quotidian life.
With a life like his, who wouldn't want to be Jack for a day?
In living Skyler Striker's life, the perfect happy family life, there was one feature that Jack of Blades was looking forward to the most: home movies. A reader of postmodern thought, Blades appreciated the bizarre station of the family camcorder. The way that it both distances yet engrosses its user in the activity being recorded. Think of holiday photos. You didn't really see the Eiffel Tower unless you have photographic proof of you standing in front of it, utilizing the laws of spatiality for the purposes of novelty so it looks (to the kind of the people who find 'The Big Bang Theory' funny) like you are actually holding the Parisian structure. In one hand nonetheless! Gyuk, gyuk, gyuk…To experience anything, we must have documented it (See: ROB LOWE'S SEX VIDEO). To live our lives, we have to press record.
Static turns to fade. New footage. Skyler's life as lived by Jack…
A corridor filled with people. Walls lined with battered grey lockers. Decoration consists solely of posters speaking out against drugs, sex and drugging people to have sex with them. Parents and their progeny occupy different positions. The former find themselves placed behind a table and banner; a banner with the words 'P.T.A. Bake Sale lettered in comic sans-esque scrawl with the traditional sales tactic of the occasional backwards letter employed. I don’t care what anyone says: Dyslexia is cute!
As is Dysphoria, who finds herself behind the aforementioned table dolling out a vast array of home-made (read: store brought) cakes to the braying pupils of Jade Striker's alma mater. As the parents stare on bemused at her choice unsavoury attire when dealing with children. To be fair to the former courtesan, she is wearing a very homely apron. The problem is she isn't wearing anything else. Some would argue that this is the very reason why her queue is so large and winding in number. But those who know the secret behind her most acclaimed recipe, a recipe that was firmly in practice at this bake sale, would dispute such an assumption.
Small Child Who Won't Ever Grow Any Taller: Can I have another Tabaccookie?
Dysphoria: Sure. Here you go.
A few tuts from fellow P.T.A. volunteers as the carcinogenic treat is passed from Dysphoria's slender fingers to the chubby digits of the junkie child. Suppressing her withdrawal symptoms, the child quickly fills her hodge with the biscuit. Nicotine and pixie-stick sugar cocktail together as they course around her system creating a high that would be lost on anyone of a legal age. You may disagree with Dysphoria's methods but at the very least, the school basketball teams will get their new uniforms…
The school scene, replaced by a baseball team of the little league variety. Aurally, it seems as if the cameraman was attending Game Seven of the World Series (if such an event actually exists and isn't just the product of an Englishman confusing the sporting heritage of America). A tiny girl with pigtails, perhaps only eight years young, swings her first strike. Tremulous ritualistic litanies rain down from the bleachers.
Of course, such sounds do not derive from the usual crowd of disinterested parents but rather the collective of rabid Philadelphian smarks that Jack of Blades has brought along in support of Jade Striker’s little league team. Second swing; second miss. Filling the bleachers in their droves, the smarks show the correct decorum for such an event. Third strike. She’s out.
The Uncouth and Unwashed Wrestling Fans: You fucked up! You fucked up!
Tears from the Teeny Tigers star player (her bat connected with the ball slightly about two months ago). More truculent abuse is hurled at her. More static. A new scene; a new moment of Jack’s new life forever committed to celluloid.
Mahogany. Biscuits and tea. An ecclesiastical meeting for those of an ecclesiastical mindset. People of the congregation coming together to discuss the next best way to disseminate the Lord’s message. Smoke emanates from the teapot as Ethel's cup is replenished with Earl Gray. Smoke emanates from Jack of Blades' dying cigarette as he takes a last desperate inhalation of nicotine hoping to stave away his iconoclastic compulsions. The congregation is deep in discussion: from Leviticus to Damascus. Church: the Sunday refuge of the happy family. Church: the remaining opposition to the American Dream.
Holy-Than-Thou Holy Man: …We need America to re-find its spirtualism. Sarah Palin helped but we need to get out there. We need to sprea—
Jack of Blades: You want more people to listen to your litanies. Then go for the traditional ‘shame’ route. Start spreading scriptural opprobrium like a muck-spreader slings manure i.e. indiscriminately and everywhere. Then watch the adulterers, philanderers and blasphemers cue up as if you were handing out free diamonds and blowjobs.
Like dominoes, the rector's collection of fine teacups fall to the ground and shatter. Shock and awe. Buzzing static. Events have run dry; the filmic ledger waits to record new memories…
Familial masturbation. That's all they are. Home movies, photo journals, holiday snaps. Sundry and nothing else; designed for retrospective enjoyment. The belief is that a camera adds colour.
Well it can, if you use it properly. Take Powell & Pressburger's 'Peeping Tom', a film in which a pervert's voyeuristic fantasies are allowed to flourish through the medium of film (Also see: ROB LOWE'S SEX TAPE).
With a camera, the only thing that exists is what is captured in the frame. Through the power of Kodak, that family barbecue in ’96 exists in time without all the trauma, back history and scandal that surrounds it. It can catch the moment when Billy dropped his chicken steak on the floor and everyone laughed at him. It can't catch the common knowledge that Mr Henchcliffe used to touch his daughter in the bathtub. Pictures allow the sundry to become perfect. As a hero once said about the phenomenon of public journalism in the face of catastrophe:
"Now, of course, I can completely understand why you'd wanna look through a viewfinder if you found yourself caught up in the middle of something like this. Seeing it all through a lens would somehow disconnect you from the misery of what was happening and make it seem less real…"
Evidently, the same applies for the tragedies of quotidian life.
With a life like his, who wouldn't want to be Jack for a day?
