Back to this whole Kristen Stewart deal. I think they're just cashing in on her star power, rather than any sort of legit acting ability. I mean, she's not TERRIBLE, but someone a little more powerful would make me happy. I guess my issue is more that they're going to destroy something so beautiful. Case in point:
In the middle of the night I got up because I couldn’t sleep, pulled the cover over baby’s brown shoulder, and examined the L.A. night. What brutal, hot, siren-whining nights they are! Right across the street there was trouble. An old rickety rundown roominghouse was the scene of some kind of tragedy. The cruiser was pulled up below and the cops were questioning an old man with gray hair. Sobbings came from within. I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. L.A. is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; New York gets godawful cold in the winter but there’s a feeling of whacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. L.A. is a jungle. South Main street, where Bea and I took strolls with hotdogs, was a fantastic carnival of lights and wildness. Booted cops frisked people on practically every corner. The beatest characters in the country swarmed on the sidewalks---all of it under those soft southern California starts that are lost in the brown halo of the huge desert encampment L.A. really is. You could smell tea, weed, I mean marijuana floating in the air, together with chili beans and beer. The grand wild sound of bop floated from beerparlours; it mixed medleys with everykind of cowboy and boogiewoogie in the American night. Everybody looked like Hunkey. Wild negroes with bob caps and goatees came laughing by; then longhaired brokendown hipsters straight off route 66 from New York, then old desert rats carrying packs and heading for a parkbench at the Plaza, then Methodist ministers with ravelled sleeves, and an occasional Nature Boy saint in beard and sandals. I wanted to meet them all, talk to everybody... (p.187 Kerouac)
Now, try turning that into a movie. You can't, you just can't, and that, that raw, simple prose is what the novel is all about. To take that away, and simplify it into a he said, she said, visual piece is impossible. It's depressing, it really is.
On the bright side, I was just about to write about something, when I heard this line from On The Radio:
And we listened to it twice
Because the DJ was asleep
And I was just about to say how happy I was that this happened to me the other day. Weird. It was just so... human, and personal, and proved that there was actually someone there, controlling it, rather than it all being automated and cold. It was These Roads Don't Move by Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar. And, we're back to Jack Kerouac - full circle. This tune is based on his prose, written for the movie Big Sur. Which I haven't read or seen, so I don't have a lot to say other than his writing makes for awesome lyrics.
My brother's watching the hockey game, and this is what I just heard:
"My wife and I were addicted to strolling. We just strolled... everywhere. Then I tried Viagra. And the strolling just kinda... stopped." Hilarious.
That's it for now,
On The Radio - Regina Spektor
B
