Let Them Eat Stake

BAKER STREET | REVIEW

 by Eric J Baker

Cripes, internet people! Think of any subject that can possibly be discussed and at least 50% of you are in a raging fury about it. Michele Obama wants kids to eat more healthfully? That evil witch is tearing up the Constitution right before our eyes! The Bachelorette chose Hank over Luigi? Firebomb your congressional rep’s car in revenge! Raisins in cinnamon toast? Mass suicide is the answer!

So, wait. Lisa Bonet has a kid named Zoë with a Jew named Lenny Kravitz, then pops out two more with "Conan" star Jason Momoa 22 years later? We thought it was wit that bagged the young hunnies. Can't be. It's the seaweed.

The big topic that has folks frothing this week is remakes, now that the new versions of Conan the Barbarian and Fright Night have hit theaters. The argument goes, “How dare Hollywood screw with these classics? It’s heresy I tell you!” Yes, because that shot of Arnold Schwarzenegger punching out a camel in Conan rivals the baptism scene at the end of The Godfather for cinematic brilliance. Because Kurosawa saw the original Fright Night, said, “Fuck it. I can’t top that,” and quit making movies.

Sad People in Love

THE KILLOUGH CHRONICLES | REVIEW

by James Killough

As snarky as I tend to be in these pages, I do have a conscience.   I felt guilty about passing judgment on a film the other day without actually having seen it.  What I did was a bait-and-switch review, as Baker named it, by leading with how I would never want to see Beginners, but went to see Bridesmaids instead.  I said about Beginners, “It has chatty indie quirky feel-good Sundance Festival flick written all over it, which means I’m likely to hate it.”

I can't post yet another picture of Ewan McGregor. So I'll put in who I thought would have made a better lead in "Beginners." Michael Fassbender would have been perfect, too.

So I dragged my conscience-laden ass to the Arclight last night and, yeah, just as I thought, I pretty much hated Beginners.  If wanting to reach into my pocket, pull out my Blackberry and play World Series Poker for additional stimulus is an indication of how bored or annoyed I am, I stopped myself from reaching for it five times during the course of the film.

Preening Seals on the Beach

I promised you a gratuitously assonant title to make up for all of the wanton alliteration the past few days, so there you have it.  I know you’ve been waiting for it like my nieces on Christmas Eve, peeking at my blog every so often trying to guess what sort of untrustworthy grammatical presents I have wrapped here.

Colin Farrell and his ex, Alicja, in "Ondine," Neil Jordan's film about a drug mule pseudo-selkie. (A selkie is a seal person, like a mermaid with a bark.) Do you think Colin and Alicja's hair had sex with each other when they were sleeping?

How do I really feel about alliteration, you ask, leaning forward with your journalist’s tape recorder to capture my every opinion?  Honestly, I feel it looks great on me, cheap on others.  Seriously, though, I’m not a fan of using alliteration even in my work, unless it’s cheesy Dr. Suess tongue-in-cheek titles, the way I’ve used it so far in the blog titles.  Alliteration is too easy for a writer to fall into; it’s puerile and lazy in a way.  Puerile because it can make a piece sound like an adolescent balancing an eel on his nose to impress a cheerleader.

The Frolic Room, LA's premiere dive bar around the corner form me in Hollywood. But I don't go because I stopped drinking, and lost 12 pounds as a result.

I went to a reading at Book Soup in West Hollywood once, the first time the guest author had read her book out loud.  It was a guidebook to dive bars in LA, so we’re not talking about a Cormac McCarthy reading, here.  I went because I wanted to buy a local high-functioning alcoholic friend of mine the book as a present.  Midway through, the author stopped herself and commented on how stunned she was that she used so many alliterations.  You could tell she was a little embarrassed.  Alliteration is just too Disney to be cool.

Assonance, however, can be the swooning cello reverberating cocoonishly beneath all great prose poetry.  Well, probably poetry in general.

The magical marker Tristan Eaton having a quick doodle on a wall, an experiment in Krink.

My friend, colleague and muse Tristan Eaton started a blog the very same day I did, which is eerie because I consider him to be my spiritual younger brother.  Tristan just dazzles me with his prolificacy, how he can seem to be several places all over the world at once like some character out of Harry Potter, painting murals, sculpting toys, illustrating brands.  I would like to say that Tristan is to images what I am to words in terms of output, but that would be an audacious claim even for this seasoned braggart.

I’m not the only one who thinks Tristan and I are similar.  When I tried to hook him up with my creative partner Rain Li, she said in her mockney Beijing accent, “Why I want to date him fo’?  He look like you.  That would be just too weird, dah-ling.”

I just wish I had Tristan’s hair.