Jordan Hoffman Dot Com

Here’s something that they don’t tell you when you poke around and learn about Celine - he’s really effing funny. Misogynistic, racist, a probable Nazi sympathizer (if not full on collaborator) yes - but also really funny. The horrors on WWI are on full display starting with chapter two, but the vibe I got is much more P. J. O’Rourke than Erich Maria Remarque.

The first 250 pages are a plotless screed as “Ferdinand” looks down his nose at war, then the homefront, then Colonization in Africa, then New York, then the Ford factory in Detroit, with nothing but scorn for society and its inhabitants - those disgusting humans. Ferdinand is not above it, though, loaded with semen and feces and the barbarous human need to expel both of these at regular intervals.

Finally a return to France and setting up shop as a physician in a low-rent part of Paris where the focus is more on the bottom line than Hippocrates. Here something resembling a traditional plot comes in with a cast of despicable characters all screwing each other, literally and figuratively, to pass the time. Ferdinand finds himself, at the end, the head of a local insane asylum, the only natural place to be.

Every page of Celine’s book is like a punch in the eye of horrible, humorous depravity - and endless bon mots. Snuck between the nihilism, usually in ellipses, are short phrases of remarkable beauty. Celine was a hero the Beats and it is obvious why - nearly everything he writes is quotable (I’d give you some examples, but then I wouldn’t know where to stop) and, surely, if spake with the right cadence (or French accent) will make you sound real, real deep.

A very entertaining, although ultimately depressing book.

In 1997 Lou Reed released what I consider his greatest achievement other than 1989’s New York, Set The Twilight Reeling. I went absolutely batshit for this album and still dig it out from time to time. In 2000 he followed it up with the just-okay Ecstacy. It is no Twilight so after a few spins it went straight into the library.

I dug it out recently and while I agree with my original assessment that it is lesser Lou, there is still a great deal to enjoy on it (other than the money shot cover art.)

Tunes like “Paranoia Key of E” and “Future Farmers of America” have a really good groove and are very hummable.

The masterpiece, though, is the incredibly purple “Modern Dance” - a song that actually has the audacity to rhyme “Moon” and “June.” The lyrics to “Modern Dance” are so absurd they achieve a sort of brilliance; the song itself has the chord progressions of a classic showtune, but with Reed’s fuzz guitar and, um, unique vocal delivery. Everything that is awesome and awful about Lou Reed (he may be a fool, but he’s our fool) can be found on this track. It is, in its own way, absolutely fucking perfect.

Here it is on YouTube. He dresses like a chicken.

Hey - it’s Will Riker flirting with all the girls on DS9, yakking with Kira Nerys, her showing him the Defiant and - OH SNAP! He’s gone crazy! Wait, no, it’s not Will Riker at all. It’s Tom Riker. And TOM Riker’s gone crazy! He’s with the Maquis (okay, maybe not crazy crazy) and he’s on a suicide mission (he IS crazy!)

Sisko has to join forces with Gul Dukat (ewww) and find the Defiant. Damn the Defiant!

Turns out Dukat uncovers some shenanigans in the Obsidian Order (Riker’s plan all along? Kinda, but not really, but okay) that’s something of a reverse-Maquis. The plot thickens. Plus Dukat has feelings. What-ev. Great episode.

I remain very much in the minority, but I still feel that this is a pretty damned good movie.

The first 20 minutes - the Enterprise-B prologue - remains fanfuckingtastic. On its own, it is the greatest short film of the 1990s. The two big problems everyone’s got with this film are real, however.

1) The Nexus - it makes no sense. How is Guinan there? How does Picard find Kirk? How do Picard and Kirk leave? Why don’t they stop Soran at a different time, if they can go anywhere, instead of when he is armed and about to do damage? Why must Soran divert the energy ribbon to the planet and not fly a ship into it (he was in the El Aurian transport the first time, right?) Data says that the ribbon would destroy the ship but a) what does Soran care? and b) he was on a ship the first time - WTF?!!?

2) Kirk’s death. Sledding down an incline on a footbridge? Fuck you. You wanna kill Captain Kirk he better be at the epicenter of a supernova. Come on.

Okay, with that out of my system, it is a good movie. It keeps moving and has lots of nifty effects that hold up 14 years later. And poor Malcolm McDowell - he does a good job here and no one ever bothered to thank him.

Jadzia shtups some guy from a planet interphasing in & out of our corporeal dimension. They figure out a way to stay together. But it doesn’t work. Kinda like this episode doesn’t work.

This is one of those dreams where no matter how much you climb you just keep falling in deeper. O’Brien accidentally sets off a Fail Safe defense system for “Terok Nor” that, one screw up after another, leads to the whole station about to blow up. Garak tries to help out - to no avail. Gul Dukat comes by to twiddle his mustache and then - d’oh! - he’s stuck there too. Only Sisko and save the day with his kick-ass-itude.

Very fun stuff.

Quark accidentally smuggles a Jem’Hadar infant (they grow up so fast!) onto the station. Kira wants to kill it, Sisko wants to farm it out to Starfleet for study, but Odo (bristling at the idea of it living in a lab) uses his status as a “Founder” to try and domesticate him.

Not a lot of luck.

Sisko allows Odo to drop him off in the Gamma Quadrant, like throwing a fish back in a pond. Not a smart move, maybe, but for Odo sometimes you bend.

DS9 goes into the WTF mode with a highly Philip K. Dick-inspired story. Kira is kidnapped by Cardassians and awakens to find herself…one of them? Hw-hwhat?!?!?

The story is that she is not Kira Nerys, Bajoran freedom fighter, but actually a deep cover Cardassian agent who agreed to have her memory wiped for heavy infiltration. And all her memories are implants, etc.

Further twists occur when we discover that this new Nerys’ “father” is actually a Cardassian dissident. Things go around in circles a few times til we wind up where we started, but not without a good load of fun along the way.

Although I generally find further inquiry into the mechanics of the Trill race fascinating, this episode takes as many of its cues from the odd episode of Scooby Doo than anything else. The upshot is that the Dax Symbiote was hosted, for a brief spell, by someone that Jadzia (and the other Daxes) didn’t know about. Indeed, these few months have been blocked from her memory, lest a horrible secret be learned. Of course, the system that is blocking the memory (a drug?) is wearing down, causing Jadzia to go all goofy. Sisko & co. learn this - it ain’t as hard to be a Trill host as you might think. But keep that on the d.l., lest there be a panic in the streets. In exchange for Jadzia’s life, they agree - something Picard would probably not have done. (Not that he would have let Jadzia die, he just would have moralized for so long that the Trills would have relented.)

I make this episode sound better than it is. It is mostly bad Terry Farrell acting.

I know I speak in hyperbole a lot, but, seriously, the best subs anywhere on the planet are at Sorrento’s in Freehold, NJ.

It’s a combo of the bread (soft), fresh tomatoes, awesome meats & cheeses, proper ratio of onions, oil, vinegar, hot peppers. Even the paper plates have something special about them.

Look at these photos and weep.

The hippest place to be this weekend was the library off Route 9 in Manalapan - to see Courtney Lin Kaita perform Elgar, Schumann and Bach, but also just to drink in the civic awesomeness. This is the library of my youth, it can so beat up your library, and I was thrilled to show Ann around the place.

I know I am in the minority here, but here goes: Alien is a work of art, Aliens is a fun movie.

There is a subtlety of tone to the original film that is completely disposed of in Cameron’s film. The dialogue in Alien felt like direct cinema, like Casavettes, dare-I-say. In Cameron’s film, it is all “Game over, man!” Fun, yes, don’t get me wrong, but hardly believable.

I also don’t like how the “world of the film” is given such mundane specificity. “The Company” has a name and the Colonial Marines have US flag patches on their uniforms. What is so wonderful about the first film is that you have absolutely no idea about when this is all going down. Tying it down to the US Flag kinda cheapens it.

And the little girl is annoying. And the device on her wrist is hokey. (Actual line of dialogue, “We can find her with THIS!” as the prop introduced earlier as a TRACKER is re-introduced. Eeegads.) Frankly, even as a kid I knew this was idiotic. When Ripley showed up in that forklift skeleton and my friends shouted “Awesome!” I was thinking, “Eh, a guilty pleasure.” Yeah, I was an annoying 12 year old.

But it is fun to watch shit blow up. And fun to see the aesthetic of every single stinking video game get created.

A whole new genre is created: sci-fi horror.

A monster movie, I guess, sure, and not much more, but Scott’s Alien is a landmark in tone. It is all tone. From groggily waking up in the neat-looking but dingy Nostromo to sittin’ around griping about work as though in an off-broadway black box theater (meant as compliment.) Even though this is just a monster movie, you still have to pay attention to find out what is going on.

They’d never make a movie like this anymore, as made evident by every sub-par entry in the franchise after this point.

I’m using the revisionist name ’cause that’s the one on the cover of the new DVD collection that was recently handed to me. I watched this 756 times (approx.) as a kid, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. Here’s what I got from it this time.

1 - Marion Ravenwood - what a great character. So much more than just “the girl.” She’s tough and scrappy and attractive but not a ditz and still needs the help of a big, strong man but not, like, for everything. Fantastic.

2 - Awesome script. The exposition is laid out expertly and with humor. Humor all around. Fabulous stuff.

3 - There’s hardly any dialogue! Like I said, awesome script. This is visual storytelling. There are giant swaths of screentime where not a word is spoken. Fantastic.

4 - This movie stars the trumpet. During those dialogue free speeches, the talking is all done with John Williams’ killer brass. Not just “Indy’s Theme” but all the music. So awesome.

5 - The truck sequence is the best one. When Indy busted out on that horse I shouted “YAY!” in my home with no irony.

You don’t believe me?

I will not deny that three hours and forty-five minutes is a long night at the opera, even at the swank and prime people-watching venue The Metropolitan Opera House. I consider myself a full-fledged Glass fan, but I also think that the first act of Satyagraha is the strongest, the second act opens strongly, and third is a little dull. So when 11:45 rolled around, I sighed a scale-trilling, repetitive sigh of relief. It’s not like I could follow anything resembling a story; not that I was looking for one.

But, generally speaking, I loved it. I really do dig Glass’ music. The “repetitiveness” is actually deceptive. When he’s in a groove, nearly every run is a slight permutation on the one prior. And trying to follow the course of one instrument line feels like isolating a cell under a microscope.

Anyway, here’s what the NY Times had to say.

You are probably a fan of Daniel Lanois and don’t even know it. He is the pioneer of the unusual sound that has given U2, Peter Gabriel and the recent good work of Bob Dylan all of their better moments. Also The Neville Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson and a bazillion others. He’s also the producer of his own occasional work. Since 1989 he has put out 5 CDs, one an instrumental. This, the fifth one, is actual the soundtrack to a documentary Lanois has made that I have not seen. From what I can glean of the scraps of dialogue in between some of the tracks, it is a film about art, inspiration and creation.

There are cuts on here as good as Lanois has ever done - one track may be the best lap steel solo I’ve ever heard. It is Lanois’ “Watermelon in Easter Hay” to put it in obscure terms.

Anyhow, I bought this about a week and a half ago and I can’t stop listening to it. If you like his other stuff, definitely check this out.

I’ve dipped my toe in the X-Men before - I’ve even seen one of the movies (the second one.) This is allegedly one of the most impressive story arcs (and one that’ll get referenced in an upcoming, you guessed it, Trek/X-Men crossover) so I picked up a copy of this in trade paperback for a song at Comic-Con to check it out.

The fact of the matter is that I’m just not that much of a fan of this era’s Marvel comics. While there is an inkling of actual hard SF time travel mindf@&i#ng going on here, it is mostly just fighting and horrible thought bubbles and narration. I know Marvel comics are as important to some as original Trek is to me, but I just can’t connect to this on any real level

I’ve seen Transporter 2 (okay, most of Transporter 2) but not this and since every article I publish at UGO seems to reference this film as a hallmark of our time I thought it appropriate that I check this out. The action sequences are indeed dazzling and the bizarre choice of music on the soundtrack makes it clear that you should be having fun. And much of it is fun. Lots of jumping and stuff.

Now I’ve seen The Transporter.