5/23/10

our hearts and minds

Look, i really don't want to be a +1 to some conflagration of young, smirking writers behind so many macbooks. That is not my task or aim. But it is time to blog stoned now and assume the role of modern-day prophet or lute-player/lead singer of an alt-classicist band five hundred years ago. Amazingly long sentence that was.

I've been watching Hearts and Minds, a documentary about how America brutalized north and south Vietnam. Right now it's a high school football coach slapping each of his team in the face in the locker room. I think of adolescence.

Now it's Lyndon Johnson telling us all that we are going to win. A shot of a crowd. A man shoots another in the head. Bodies on the green green tropical crabgrass. Moving bodies. Next to a corkscrew entrance-ramp of an indoor parking garage. Nobody knew.

If i were a documentary film maker, that would be my five-star rating equivalent: "Nobody Knew." And then a long, contemplative silence. Certain drives propel documentarians. Something about the biggest war machine in human history. And there is an awakening.

Everyone loves bobby kennedy. Everyone. Try with all your might, right now, to not love and pity and elevate bobby kennedy. Yeah, that's what i thought. "must be hard bein' brothers." -Forrest Gump.

Dude's being emotional as fuck about his assassination right now. On camera and all, for our viewing pleasure. This is not a fun movie to watch.

Body bags all zipped up in black plastic. Like mylar balloons. I saw an ad in game informer today that said "kill bigger," all caps. It made me sad about the whole artform. Or sad for it. In the words of Yahtzee, i'm a games are art hippie. That's just my thing though.

I know a girl who can give it back without being insane. She is my favorite right now because of this. It's forbidden though, so i should put that out of my awful filthy boymind this instant god dammit.

I hate this fucking movie. It is making me feel awful non.fucking.stop. But the remote is so so far away.

They're beating peasants now. with the butts of their grenade launchers. Those same grenade launchers sent the T-1000 to its melty fate. They saved my world when i was ten years old.

I will say, though, that Michael Moore wishes he could make a movie so powerful and real. So eloquent and unapologetic.

Does anyone else ever gain a deep knowing all of the sudden? Ever understand, finally, a secret that had been eluding you? No one can ever truly know anyone else. This feels very donnie darko, but it also feels very true. Though, i have never been married, so i am in no position to speculate.

"...and the foreigners we were."

The ambassador to Vietnam when the war was going on was a General. That makes me itch a bit.

Men who can't use their shriveled legs grab their ankles, move them forward, then slide across the floor on their asses. They were prisoners for too long, i guess. A woman with crooked cheekbones is talking now. Describing how she was tortured. We've really got to stop having wars.

The Edukators was a horrible movie by the way. It was really, really stupid.

I don't ever want to see "The Sorrow And The Pity". But I want to draw everyone in this documentary's face, frame by frame, for the rest of my life.


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