Let It Ride

I've watchedⁱ Let It Rideⁱⁱ as part of a "get me everything Richard Dreyfuss ever did" brought about by re-watchingⁱⁱⁱ Tin Men, which reminded me he's possibly the most underappreciated and unfortunately underrated actor ever. Like a male Barkin^iv, if you would.

The film's a delightful gem of self-aware, joyously celebratory^v neuroticism, replete with sequences that, while deeply satisfactory, are nevertheless completely ambiguous : is this a dream sequence ?! I mean... it could be, but then again not necessarily, and finally... what difference does it make ?

Truth be told the whole film's rather a dream sequence gone good ; Jennifer Tilly (o americanca frumoasa...) is in rare form, that pro...longed^vi scene where she hops up and down like she were riding demonic dicks from Hell is probably the epitome of its kind. What the fuck did they do, double tape ? Super glue ? How did they keep those puppies inside the approximate covering during the mother of all wardrobe malfunction opportunities ? Back in Boston they teach girls not to jump up and down when decolletage'd starting at about age nine, how the fuck does gravity interact with momentum and impulse on her fucking planet ?! The movies, right, it's what they're for.

Even the lesser bitches, misfortunate rejects that'll go on to a deplorable career in regrettable atrocities like Cynthia Nixon "can no longer abstain themselves"^vii and, carried by the flow of cool, manage to deliver acceptable performances in this context. There's some pretty excellent character acting, also, in the sense that the cameos are very memorable -- Robbie Coltrane's part in particular is something the fuck else (not because any great matter, it's all actor's art & shoeshiner's spittle ; but because of how exceptionally well it works in there).

One of the few productions that not merely I won't ever have to re-shoot, but it wouldn't even have ever occurred me to make. Which... other people, right ? It's what they're for ; or, at the very least, what they were supposed to be for.

1. I've watched all sorts of films of late, most of which not worth even a cursory mention -- some of which so utterly fucking insanely horrible I'll condescend to a passing line : ever heard of Nasa ("The Godmother", 2011, by Jesús del 0, with Dragos Bucur of all people) ? Holy shit it's offensively terrible, after that atrocity with the Lisa Kudrow wannabe dumb cunt sexually molesting kindergardeners I turned it off with extreme prejudice. It was the second scene! And what the fuck is it with using expensive Euro infrastructure to re-create the dumb cunts' ever-beloved Africa ? Kids do not sit in a fucking circle on fucking pillows, just like back in your old country, fucking spurious apes. You're unwelcome here, go the fuck back to the trees that spawned you. To the whips, the lot of you, go back to being traded by "your family -- the most important thing in the world" to the Portuguese for shiny beads, get the fuck lost off my fucking planet. Kids sit in benches, a Cartesian structure oriented towards the dominant male in front ; kids do not sit around a stupid cunt "equally valuating & validating each other". Motherfucker. Just read the damned synopsis, listen to this dumb shit :

   Jennifer este o americancă frumoasă stabilită în România, cu o carieră de profesoară de literatură în București. Este căsătorită cu Radu Prodan, un respectat finanțist român, și împreună au un băiat de 10 ani, extrem de inteligent, David.

   Mary Sue much ? Oh wait, sorry, my bad, it was actually... Jennifer, right ? Because what the fuck else was it going to be, dumb battery chickens spend all day with the clucker, it's gotta be Jennifer. And da polis breaks up the precious cuntlets' baby shower, o noes, and it's all a guy's fault, he "wasn't what he was pretending to be" bla bla bla bla ?! Queers! Not even worth shooting, the stupid cunts. Forget splooging on their face -- hold their eyes open with both hands and shoot it all under the upper eyelids.

   But anyways, I've done a lot more besides (re)watching a large bagful of movies. Exploring the very space of visual possibility, for instance, it's just one of those other things I do these days. And plenty more besides, none of which including bois in any manner. In fact, since clearing the slate of simps and their fastidious bullshit a coupla months ago the days seems to somehow, magically, carry twice the historical number of hours I seem to remember. Try it yourself, what can it possibly harm by this point. [↩]

2. 1989, by Joe Pytka, with Richard Dreyfuss, Jennifer Tilly. [↩]
3. One of the great advantages of taking in new girls is that you know as an absolute, divinely pre-ordained given that they'll be as dumb as a sack of coal -- not necessarily as a personal characteristic, speaking to theoretical capacity ; but necessarily as an actual property, speaking of personal history. Whether they have or they utterly lack the capacity to enjoy a good movie, it is apodictically guaranteed they've never seen one.

   So you get to re-watch films, which is more generally the only true advantage of procreation : you get to re-see history (yes, exactly that history of "the only new thing in the world is") through new eyes, or rather, alongside them. Truth be told, the world is chock-full of new eyes, a factual abundance well outstripping the putative (if entirely absent) abundance of alleged novelty.

   This is a much better fate than it might sound like to the untrained ear, a truth underscored by the circumstance that I wouldn't trade it out ; and while considering meta-problems : amusingly enough I suspect the linked article is well in danger of being linked more for that comment than for its (utterly respectable, and immensely linkable not to mention oft lined) body. Or maybe amusingly isn't quite the word. [↩]

4. Don't my tools just simply kick all conceivable fucking ass, look at that shit, 11 year old pieces ready to go in support of making a point.

   God I love my life.

   But getting back down to earth, and thus considering lower order problems : he also did a great (if somewhat awkward) job in early pantsuitist The Goodbye Girl. The awkwardness comes from attempting to maintain his whimsical, creative style in the most dreary, stolidly boring, inhuman thing conceivable -- a chick flick, nonsense made "from a female perspective" and for "the female perspective". It is strictly impossible to remain creative, let alone interesting, in such an environment ; but Dreyfuss' humping the doorframe there works way the fuck better than Pacino's whatever the fuck "I am Santa Claus" in Heat -- which I've also recently re-viewed, but won't review still, because (like the last time, and like the time before that, and, I've no doubt, all times hence) it is still a piece of shit.

   Aaand here we go, look at this :

   

   That'd be three lines of article and a full page of footnotes ; and I haven't even poot Footnote One in just yet.

   Did I mention I love my life ?

   Oh, wait, look at that, apparently the copyright notice still includes some dead wood. Well, time to do something about that, also.

   There, much better. Not only it took all of five minutes, but going over into the remnants of a NOC (where the box that can actually alter the structure of Trilema rests ever lonelier & mostly undisturbed) I noticed the Sun also rises. Or at least, it did here. Dunno about where you live, maybe the reality distortion field is of such magnitude there, not even the Sun rises anymore. Does the Sun wear a mask, where you live ? But anyways, let's not get distracted. I was saying -- not only it took all of five minutes, but most of them were spent with the sunrise. And yes, I took pictures ; they'll be included in the next batch of pictures I publish, this footnote's gone long enough.

   My life... did I mention about it ? That I love it ? I did ? Well... okay then. [↩]

5. "Joyously celebratory" doesn't mean what I suspect you might take it to mean. It's no kind of stolid mittelamerica "glory, glory hallelujah" incessant, pounding, dodgering dedication to ceaselessly and relentlessly pretending as a (misperceived) path to realising. Joyously is eminently not what happens when deeply uninformed, excessively willful cvasi-people, I-can't-believe-they're-not-people set about to "city on the hill" and other neo-protestant "fake it till you make it Jesus come". (Yeah, that's right, it's purely religious -- you seriously had no idea, no inkling of a suspicion there's no substantial difference between the preachers of "how to win friends" "economics" and the rest of the preacher troop ? It's fucking america, what the fuck, not like anyone's ever read anything there.)

   Joyously celebratory denotes this very peculiar situation where the flaws and shortcomings aren't either hidden or denied, but clearly seen, admitted for what they are, and happily poked fun at. [↩]

6. Would you have rather said "protracted" ? I dunno, just asking. [↩]
7. The Romanian equivalent is a celebrated sliver of wooden tongue ; for the longest time (up until about the mid 2000s, once the cluckers spread widely enough to dissolve any semblance of identity in the herd) any discussion of sexuality (counterintuitively enough, especially when retold by a male) had to include this "n-am mai putut sa ma abtin" magic formula, literally "could no longer abstain myself", as a sort of implicit guarantee of the quality (and strength!) of the sexual pulsions aroused -- they had to overcome something, apparently, don't you know. It figured as reliably in iliterate (but for the letters) discussions of sexual activity as the equally celebrated "aflati despre mine ca sunt bine sanatos ceea ce va doresc si voua" figured in wartime "correspondence" between younger moo-moos and the moo-moo obcina that spawned them. Imagine the indignity of this job, if you will, having to carry paper under bombardment (at least part of which undertaken with incendiary munitions) so that a trillion indistinct, interchangeable biosacks can say the literally same exact thing to a trillion "families" as equally indistinct and interchangeable as the spurious shit they spawned. In which vein I'll also confess it was always a great wonder of mine, why do "working men" aka socialism's imaginary electorate even bother with going home to "their own" as opposed to the most convenient ? If you're hiring a fortune teller, hire the cheapest, yes ? So then ? I understand it when everything works, the bus is on time, the habits take over, the familiar and the habitual reign supreme, and so the veal always shows up at the same old gate. But if there's any snag ? If there's any problems ? All these ridoinculous socialist fictions about some item "just trying to get back home"... dude, what the fuck ? If it's for whatever reason inconvenient to get back to the hole you usually go back to, just pick any other one. The closest will do just as well, for you, as the one you used to go to, or used yesterday, or whatever. What the fuck difference could it possibly make ?!

   The absurdity of "mankind" in this purely democratic sense -- strive for similarity in all things and then pretend to a difference and especially differentiability that's long given up the ghost. What the fuck ?! [↩]