Mark McKinney, actor & Kid in the Hall

(R.I.P. Glenn Ford; you already know how much I love him from an earlier entry about "Gilda".)

Why single out Mark McKinney when you are an enthusiastic fan of all the work of the Kids in the Hall? Maybe because of guilt -- when their show was originally running on TV, I loved the show but overlooked McKinney. Kevin McDonald once did a monologue sketch about being "the Kid in the Hall you don't like", but for me, Mark was that Kid. I kind of loved Da-RREL, especially when he painted tumors into his mountain scene painting, but I hated the Chicken Lady, was indifferent to the Cops, and couldn't pinpoint what else he did. Oh, and he crushed heads. Everyone else had a distinct personality and voice, and Mark was just...everyone.

Exactly. It took all these years, and many reruns and concert movie viewings for me to realize that he is a fantastic actor. He blends into his characters so perfectly and fits into a scene so seamlessly that I never gave him enough credit for what he was doing. On watching the shows now, I am amazed by his deft characterizations and perfect timing. He must be a dream of a scene partner, and he's the kind of sketch performer I strive to be.

He also brings that Ugly Comedy asthetic that I appreciate so much, those characters (like the Chicken Lady and the Headcrusher) that make you cringe with pity and disgust. It's a kind of intellectual comedy that acknowledges that life isn't pretty but it sure is funny, and that is the comedy I've grown to love.

Plus, he does commentary on the DVD of "Same Guys, Different Dresses" (I think it's that one) with Scott Thompson, and they are absolutely hilarious together. Mark's muttered disgust with how fat he'd gotten, coupled with his sarcastic contempt for Scott's (self-admitted) vanity and self-absorbtion, is gut-bustingly funny. Again, not pretty sometimes, but very, very funny. He won me over forever when there was a backstage shot of him running in his dress and huge blonde wig, and he self-deprecatingly said on the commentary track, "Look, there goes the Russian skating judge!"

Mark McKinney, the Stealth KITH.

Forest Fire from the 405

I don't know what all that smoke is on the road up ahead, though. Maybe one of the many Smog Check dodgers in the city?

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

When I was seven, eight, and nine we lived in a neighborhood in Philly where my sister and I were friends with Iranian immigrants who had one daughter her age and one daughter my age. I have a pretty poor memory and can't recall a great deal about these years, but I clearly remember the anger the Iranian family felt about the Islamic Revolution and about being forced to leave their country. Add to that the 444-day Iran hostage crisis and the distrust and fear I know they faced from some of their new neighbors, and you can imagine what a great time they were having in their new home.

Persepolis is the memoir of a girl my age whose family stayed in Iran during this time. She's the other side of the coin of the girl I knew, and the truth is that they weren't very different. Satrapi's story makes it explicitly clear that a change in regime does not signal a sudden change in the opinions and desires of all of the people; it only appears this way when the new regime practices brutal repression of free speech and political dissent. She shows how complicated life under such a regime is, and how strong ties to your own country remain, no matter how much you come to disagree with its rulers and suffer under their control.

I read this book about a year ago and still think of it often due to its illustrations of the daily truth beneath the news stories that make it to CNN or the New York Times. It's an important reminder in this age of extreme political doubletalk, which is much more sophisticated than the Evil Empire dichotomy of the Reagan Years, but still crude enough to insist that citizens are being bombed and maimed for their own good. That, in fact, they rather asked for it.

Satrapi's tales of family members taken away, tortured killed for their dissent shows that our Western insistence on standing up to the "bad guys" isn't as simple as we make it. She shows how she personally subverted the repressive laws against women (e.g. wearing the veil), but how small and deadening and useless such actions can be. Ultimately, she decided to leave her family behind and move to France rather than live in an Islamic fundamentalist Iran.

Here's what Satrapi said on her publisher's website:

If people are given the chance to experience life in more than one country, they will hate a little less. It's not a miracle potion, but little by little you can solve problems in the basement of a country, not on the surface. That is why I wanted people in other countries to read Persepolis, to see that I grew up just like other children.

We haven't been paying any heed to "the basement of a country", not here in our own country (witness New Orleans), nor in Iraq, Lebanon, or Afganistan. Until we do that, we're just hyping hate and expecting brute force to solve problems.

So I say buy this book, read it, then hit President Bush over the head with it. Repeatedly. It's okay; only Tony Blair would feel the pain.

R.I.P. KZLA

I can't tell you how disconcerting it is to flip on the radio hoping to hear Big & Rich and hearing Beyonce instead. (They now must do a song together, just to make music fans go mad.)

L.A.'s esteemed country music station KZLA is no more as of last week; it was unceremoniously replaced with an urban dance music station. (I know you think urban = black, but it also means Gwen Stefani and JLo, so maybe I really mean hip hop-esque? Rap-friendly?) The afternoon DJ showed up for work and was told partway into his shift that he was going to be out of a job as of the end of it. What kind of nasty bullshit is that? Why does corporate radio suck so hard?

This means no more Peter Tilden, one of my favorite morning radio guys. He has a good sense of humor, an unmistakable Philadelphia accent, and the ability to be nice without being a sycophant. You might know him from his scenes (especially his hilarious deleted ones) in "The Aristocrats", where he's sitting outside a cafe with Jason Alexander.

L.A. is a huge country market, and now it has no country station. A city that ignores country music is a city dangerously out of touch with mainstream America. Yes, the country scene can be frighteningly small-minded and Jesus-centric, but it is also the voice of many of your countrymen. I liked to listen to KZLA to keep up with my fellow Americans, to feed my love-hate relationship with Toby Keith, to hear those amazing, big female voices, and to puzzle over the inexplicably catchy bizarre minor key harmonizing of marketing geniuses Big & Rich.

Without KZLA, how are we going to recognize the people and songs in car commercials? HOW?!

Somebody bring country back to L.A. terrestrial radio, quick!

"Assisted Living" (2003), written and directed by Elliot Greenebaum

A low-budget movie filmed in a nursing home using the actual residents as extras and co-stars, about a women with Alzheimer's and the pothead nursing assistant she befriends. Wow, sounds like a fun night at the movies, huh? Mortality on parade! You're dying as we speak! Being old sucks, sons living in Australia and refusing to take your calls suck more!

This movie should've been bad, and after reading about it in some indie film magazines when it was screened here in L.A., I was convinced it would be. Too precious, trying to hard to be relevant, so damn Indie Indie Indie it makes your teeth hurt. Not entertaining, and so cheap it probably looks like a junior high video project. I rented it just to see how bad it was.

Boy, was I wrong. This is a helluva movie, unique and funny and touching without being sentimental. It's a ballsy piece of filmmaking because it focuses on the ugly in life -- not the pretty/ugly, like glamorized gorgeous limp heroine addict teenagers, and not cool/ugly, like underworld mobster killers, and not ugly/beautiful, like Shrek and Steve Buscemi. Plain Ugly, like life smells sometimes, it's tedious and weird and other people are difficult and argumentative and your reward is that you get to die, possibly alone and forgotten.

This movie got to me in the following ways:

1. Unique storytelling -- the video interviews with the nursing home staff at the beginning blur the line between fact and fiction, actors and people who are just like the people they are portraying in the sense that aging and aging parents affect everyone sooner or later.

The fact that Greenebaum filmed in actual nursing homes not only makes for a great (gimmicky) production note story; in this case, it also adds a shocking level of reality to the fictional story, reminding you that you can't get comfortable in the narrative world. You are forced to consider the real world at every turn, and that makes this movie awesome.

2. Beautiful cinematography -- some dude named Marcel Cabrera shot this with a great eye for color and light. The lame thing to do would've been to shoot it flat and sad, but he didn't. He and Greenebaum showed the stunningly dream-like aspect of life that smacks you in the face every once in a while, like in the beautiful golden and creamy white tones of the nursing home hallways and the emerald green of its grounds. When they focus on the hands of the elderly residents, they force you to see these bits as part of a continuum. Accept the hands as you'd accept the trees outside. Don't be afraid to stare, because it's just the way it is here on earth. Damn, this is sounding too much like that plastic bag reverie shit from "American Beauty", but ugh, that is what I mean after all.

3. The leads. Movies are about faces, right, I mean Norma Desmond told us so. Maggie Riley and Michael Bonsignore have wonderful faces, calmly expressive and thoughtful. Their acting is absolutely natural and of the moment. Great acting isn't about showing off; it's about inhabiting the character, and that's what they did.

4. The phone calls.

5. The dog.

6. The plot. The movie wouldn't work without a driving plot. Mrs Pearlman wants what she wants and goes after it right to the end. Todd keeps trying to avoid responsibility, and has to actively work to do so. Stunned numbness is a popular movie characterization these days (hello, “Garden State”), but this movie shows how it should be done. It isn't about staring just off camera and blinking slowly and wearing funny clothing; it's about how that state of mind manifests itself in the character's relationships with other people. Moment-to-moment, what choices do they make to avoid connecting with other people? Todd makes a lot of choices with a lot of consequences. Small, tiny, tiny consequences in the scheme of an infinitely large world, but all the more important and resonate for being so. Because we're all just ants on the anthill.

7. The phone calls. Seriously.

Whatever, just watch it. It's hard to talk about this movie without sounding pretentious or like I'm pitying old people or something gank like that. It moved me, that's all, it woke me up in a way. Watch it.

Unicorns and Prostitute Games

Sounds like the dreams of a dirty little girl, doesn't it?

Oops, I'm watching one of those Comedy Central Roasts on TV, and it gets in your brain and makes you see everything as a dirty joke. TV is bad!...which is so very, very good.

Look, I recently finished a book about the Medicis and Renaissance Florence, and it casually mentioned that one of them (oh, come on -- you try keeping the Cosimos and Francesco's straight after a while) acquired treasures from somewhere or other, and among the medallions and statues was a unicorn horn. And the book just went on without comment.

Why would a non-fiction -- which supposedly = FACT -- book mention a unicorn horn without explaining what the fuck that's supposed to mean? Do you think Christopher Hibbert (author of the book in question) thinks there really were unicorns back then, so he didn't bat an eye at that? Maybe next he'll write a book about Queen Victoria that blandly mentions the fairies in her garden.

I looked it up -- "unicorn horns" were indeed a prized artifact among the rich and stupid in the 1500s and 1600s. Apparently they were actually made of ivory, and they were actually from narwahls, a marine BEAST that is not a beautiful phallic horse. Or they were...something else. The internet didn't tell me much more than Hibbert did.

Hey, John Stossel -- get a load of this junk science! I can't wait until he does his 20/20 Renaissance Special: "Lorenzo the Magnificent? He seems barely fabulous to me. Give me a break!"

And there was another book I read last year that claimed that citywide fairs in Florence of the time featured "prostitute games". Again, with no explanation of what that's supposed to mean, because why write a book that clears anything up? If you have to ask, you shouldn't be reading a book about it.

Maybe the prostitutes jousted on minotaurs.

Moral: do not read books. Watch filthy roasts instead. Cock!

Hairdo -- for those days when you just want bangs

So I put my hair in a ponytail on the top of my head, then pulled down the ends to make bangs, then took a picture. I think it looks HOT! Blonde ANDROGYNY, which goes great with my GIANT HANDS!

Look, it's August and it's slow and this is how I stay mentally sharp.