Reload, Shoot. MBinaBBB pt. 2

Wednesday 10:04 pm

I’m trying to write about all that I’ve read. I’m getting pretty into it. The scenes where they talk about how the whalers wound the baby Sperm whales so they come to the surface thus luring the mother to the surface to console/protect them only to be shot with a harpoon grenade is really… grim. The first lady of the United States (Jan) is on a submarine now about to sink the ship… things are getting intense. I don’t wanna write anymore. I gotta read. Plus…. crap, I’m starving, I gotta eat something.

Friday 9:15pm

Here is where I am sore: triceps, quads, forearms, where my pecs meet my rotator, the pad of skin that precedes the thumbs… such a weird place to be sore….
Back track, I got one of those 3 day guest passes at LA Fitness with my buddy Tyler, so I felt I should really take advantage of it, going all three days and spending hours figuring out when I got so out of shape… or really knowing how far out of shape I have become. Ughhh.
I go to look for “the Whale Book” and it is no where to be found! Oh shit. And I had just been exchanging emails back and forth with one of the authors who is worried I’m gonna, I dunno, sell his book on eBay? I mean, I’m reading the galley’s which is stuff that not necessarily the final draft so he is worried it’s gonna get out unfinished somehow. I guess it’s the equivalent of having MP3’s leaked online before the release of an album. Some artist are bummed by it because it may not be the most perfect version or they are not getting money for there hard work. Well, I can safely say that ne’er have I not gone and bought an album I really loved that I got the MP3 of first… there is something about having that archiveable, physical copy. I respect the artist. So with that I offer this to the authors of Save the Whales Please (who I know are reading this): I have already pre-ordered your book online, I will not leak this copy out, but all the same, I’m halfway through the book, I’d really like to finish reading it. You both should be glad being that I have 5 books unfinished books I’m still reading (The Rest is Noise, Women, Tropic of Cancer, Man’s Search for Meaning, Last Leg) and I have put them all aside to read yours. Now if I could only find it…

Sunday 10:30am
Phew. It was in my car.
Really, this was a message from a few hours after my last posting, I just got busy and didn’t have time to login. This book is interesting in that I keep returning to how much it reminds of the show “24.” Maybe its because of the dual intersecting plotlines of the political intrigue in Washington with the action/adventure bit in the field. It’s more action packed and surprisingly not so “bleeding heart-y.” And the pacing, I dig it, Danny Boyle pacing, I can hear a soundtrack going with the book. There’s an idea…. what if there was a reading of the book... someone with good voicing, actors playing each part and a narrator like James Earl Jones… or Obama, and a DJ spinning to match the tone of the paragraph! It would be a hell of a more interesting reading then I’ve seen n the pass. That would be cool. Hmm….
I gotta think about that some more.

Sunday, A little while later…
OK. Here are my top 5 songs to be in the soundtrack if there was ever a dramatic reading or film to be made out of this book. You hear it hear first:

1.) Radiohead – How to Disappear Completely
2.) Sigur Ros – Sven G Englar (sp?)
3.) Dirty Three – Deep Waters
4.) Astreal – Xumisitia
5.) Bjork – Oceania

Tuesday 9:07am

Okay, it’s pretty much settled now. If this were ever made into a film, the guy who plays FBI Director Larry Moss on “24” and Agent Renee Walker should totally play the President and First Lady, respectively. Maybe it’s cause I started reading the book just as I really got into the new season of the show…I dunno, I can’t NOT picture them now when I read it. Does that ever happen to you all? People in your lives are persons you just saw on TV remain permanently imprinted with fictional characters you’re reading about, that casting has already been done in your memory and the players are fixed? I can’t remember, for instance what the Amory Blaine looked like when I was reading F.Scott Fitzgeralds This Side of Paradise but I definitely know that the character Goldmund in Hesse’s Narcissus and Goldmund was a combination of the guy who gave me the book and a another dude we hung out with that met the description by the author. I wonder if we always cast characters while we are reading… Anyways.


Friday 1:15pm
The great about reading a Bukowski novel is that the chapters are so damn short that interest is kept and you can read little slivers, 5 minutes at a time and always have a good stopping point. Same with this book… it’s as if they have been retrofitted for a reduce attention span of the current generation. Works for me, it saves from a lot of rereading to “get” the flow of a conflict or conversation. I like the book in that it’s a good thriller-y read and not too preachy or generic given the opportunity to with the subject matter (saving whales etc…). I wonder how intense conflicts between Green Peace boats and giant whaling ships really do get on the high seas? I mean, really, whats to keep a ship from running over a raft and just say that they didn’t have enough time to maneuver around it? I dunno… I mean people kill each other over money all the time, whats keeping the activist in the little skiffs safe at sea? A noble cause, but not a position I’d want to be in.

Saturday 1:15pm
Oh look, the same time as last. After seeing my friend Rishi spinning yesterday, I wanna DJ again. My friend Ginette in Singapore sent me a mix she had blended and made into a single track. I started messing around with the idea of premixing music on Garage band and playing it on a MP3 player live, and having fake cartoon-y turn tables (ala Michel Gondry) and pretend scratching, swapping, fades per remembering the moments from the pre made mix. Well, that sounds convoluted and started doing it yesterday night. Ummm, yeah, it’s hard.
In other news: I think the threat of legal action has evaporated, the authors have stopped emailing and leaving me message… maybe they realized that a.) I like the book therefore want to keep it, b.) this is a kind of marketing/awareness for the book. Everyone wins. I did tell them that if the book began to suck, I’m gonna write about it. They didn’t seem to take that too well.
Look: I champion the artist. Many people have the luxury of simply being a critic: of food, of music, of things that are hyped, clothing, appearance, mom’s boyfriend, blogs, lifestyles. It’s easy to take apart, sometimes it’s fun. Sometimes it’s affirming of one’s identity, some people love being critical assholes. But I do believe there is a different between discernment and the kind of criticism that is fueled entirely by the ego. Have you ever read that Oscar Wilde piece on criticism as an artform?

aqui: http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/480/

-mr.E