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directorcommentary | jasonbentley.org

Jason Bentley, Santa Clara, California: writing, photography, graphic design, music, audio, video, technology, life

November 21, 2004

It's about time...to go Deep

Mark took me out for my birthday yesterday and that time included a walk around downtown San Jose. Mark and I both share an enthusiasm for the South Bay, but Mark, being far more motiviated than I in civic matters, has long contemplated a downtown awareness campaign designed to get a better nightlife, cooler neighborhoods, and a greater sense of community to San Jose. It seems to me that's been tried before, but hope springs eternal.

"It's About Time!" was the caption to a timeline at the San Jose Museum of Art, and we bandied it about as a possible slogan option.

As his Minister of Propaganda, I'm with him all the way!

Here I am looking rather seasonal:



Click me to see more pictures from yesterday.

Mark took me to "Deep," the restaurant that opened up less than a month ago in the space where Hamburger Mary's used to be. The location still sucks, but the food is amazing - when they say their specialty is crab, trust them. Plus, if you go for dinner, you can get a free wrist band to stay for the hip-hop/house club they have afterwards on Saturday nights. Bonus!

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The Gaels of November

So, in the Associative Thinker package deal is an unfortunate side effect - everyone looks like someone else. I'm always thinking somebody I know look like a celebrity, or what not. It's just part of this constant pattern matching that goes on in my head, for better or for worse. But still, there are occasion when I'm able to back up my associations with hard evidence, such as the case of Mexican heartthrob Gael Garcia Bernal and suburban hearthrob (and long-time friend) Micah Wyenn.



Shocking, isn't it? And this one I can prove.

I used to think that Micah looked a bit like Edward Furlong, the original John Connor from Terminator 2. Furlong did this godawful pop CD in Japan which I have a copy of, and some of the pictures in the booklet looks just like Micah dressed in early 90's Hammertime colors.

But the years have taken their toll - not on Micah - he still looks great. But Furlong?



AAAACK! Eddie! Come with me if you want to live! So he's either a junkie...or, if the photograph below is to be believed, he's turning into Sharon Stone.



Either way, Micah looks like neither of these, and so forevermore, he ne'er looks like Edward Furlong. But I wouldn't be surprised if Micah was actually born Carlos Del Fuego Bernal, and sometime in the future there'll be a dusty, shirtless, sweaty, rural Mexican confrontation between the two long lost brothers, and I'll be there with the video camera, o my brothers, and we will all viddy well.

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Blame It On the Bossa Nova

I love how on Star Trek: The Next Generation, humanoid aliens from the far reaches of the galaxy talk to each other in perfect English. This is, of course, done with the help of a largely unseen device called the "Universal Translator." The translator is so ubiquitous that it basically goes unsung and unnoticed, to the point where it isn't even mentioned as a problem when it seems to fail horribly (see the episode where Data has to go off and learn sign language because a deaf negotiator has lost his "chorus").

I bring all this up to illustrate a point - the reason universal translation is so good in the 23rd century is because they'd already gone through the 21st century. Tranlation just ain't there yet.

I came across an interesting looking blog called "booksmart/streetstupid," which turns out to be written in Portuguese. No big deal, I'll just go to Altavista and use Babelfish to translate! Baaaad idea. To say that colloquial Portuguese confuses the Babelfish robot is exquisite understatement.

This paragraph looked particularly interesting:

Ganhei minha tão almejada camiseta Enjoy Cock que tinha visto há mais de mil anos na Björk. Meu irmão ficou bem chocado. Perguntou se eu realmente iria vesti-la. E por que não? Bom, isso veio de um ser humano que acha vulgar carcinhas divertidas. Ele deve achar bom fio dental comestível. Yuck. Mas adentrar um puteiro da Augusta com tal camiseta não provocou reação alguma. Também.. duh. Vou fazer uma versão ipsis literis: Beba Rola. Quem sabe? Mas que diabos eu faria num puteiro de novo? Não. Fiquei com muito medo de uma puta com uma comissão de frente sufocante só de ver e dentes tão grandes quanto.

The Babelfish said:

I gained mine so longed for t-shirt Enjoy Cock that it had seen more than has a thousand years in the Björk. My brother was shocked well. He asked if I really would go vestiz it. E why not? Good, this lode of one for human being that it finds carcinhas vulgar amused. It must find good dental wire eatable. Yuck. But to adentrar a puteiro of the August with such t-shirt did not provoke reaction some. Also. duh. I go to make a version ipsis literis: It drinks Rolls. Who knows? But that devils I would make in a puteiro of new? Not. I was with much fear of one puta with a commission of suffocating front to only see and teeth so great how much.

Then I said:

Brazilians must be insane! So crazy, so sexy, so ...untranslatable, so ...thousand years in the Björk.

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In Stockton We Shall All Meet Our Reckoning

My friend Mark turned me on to a great movie last night - one I vaguely recalled from its very limited theatrical release in 1996, but which I'd passed by in the video store many times since: Matthew Bright's Freeway. It was made, I've learned, for HBO originally, but was good enough to get a limited run on the coasts. And how! It was one of Reese Witherspoon's first great performances and gave Kiefer Sutherland the chance to prove himself the purring bad guy for all time.

I love movies that confound my expectations - and Freeway is one of them, setting up clichés and then gleefully knocking them down, one-by-one. This starts with the cover box, which reeks of B-grade PoTa (post-Tarantino) roads-and-guns: Witherspoon is even made up to look like Juliette Lewis (for the love of God) on the back of the case. Freeway is smarter than the average post-Pulp Fiction derivatives, and careens from genre to genre, putting the girl at its center in all sorts of peril that she navigates with bitch-slapping aplomb, like Holly Hunter in a Russ Meyer flick.

The movie stops the road picture long enough for some courtroom drama and a girl's prison flick before heading back up I-5 for the big showdown in a trailer park in Stockton. Yes, Stockton. When we finally got to the girl's prison, I felt we were in the hands of someone as comfortable with the lowbrow grindhouse exploitation as he was with Tarantino's operatically delirious top-tier street slams (which are themselves more than comfortable in low company). When Witherspoon and her girl-prison nemesis become best-friends-on-the-lam, I knew this was a film that Ebert would love for all the right reasons. And sure enough, when I checked, he'd given it ***1/2 (out of ****).

I'll let other writers fill you in on the plot and comparisons to "Little Red Riding Hood." Suffice to say it was a great time. Not for the squeamish, but often really funny. I'd actually love to see this on a double-bill with The Chase, a ten-year-old (!) road flick starring Charlie Sheen and Kristy Swanson. The Chase is so underrated - it's a balls-out funny dead-on media satire, full of winking, Clinton-era self-awareness (self-conciousness?). Like Freeway, it also involves a kidnapping and car chase in Southern California, but the lighter and sunnier Chase stays on the road for nearly the entire picture, and unlike Freeway's more voyeuristic, languid storytelling, The Chase is full of quick editing and wooshy sound effects.

But the The Chase's trump card is of course, the incomperable, thick-necked Henry Rollins as a thick-necked police officer who's being taped for a Cops-like TV show. Priceless performance. I love Rollins anyway, but when he he goes off on how being a cop makes him feel like a star - like Sylvester Stallone, it brings a smile to anyone who's ever cackled to a worn out copy of Rollins Live at McCabe's in someone's car.

Both Freeway and The Chase are great California movies - and better yet, great California road movies. I think even the most casual Californian can testify to the integral part roads and freeways play in our lives, and how the car helps to define the very character of our California culture. Both of these movies know this to their very cores. While The Chase mostly sticks to the sunny coast, Freeway takes I-5 up through the Southland and Central Valley, and perflectly captures the sizzling, diffuse light of summertime in Bakersfield and Fresno and Stockton. Both are essential trips through California.




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