Friday, September 15, 2006 7:30 PM at Skylight Books

Arthur Magazine and the Nightjar Review Present…

“They’re Coming To Take You Away: The Poetry of of Alex Mitchell, John Tottenham, and Peter Relic”

Three Los Angeles poets bring their work to Skylight for a evening of laughter, languor, and imagistic transgressions.

Alex Mitchell has been called both “a rock’n’roll addicted sweetly emotional fellow traveler” and “a bruiser with a bruised heart” in the pages of Arthur Magazine. Mitchell is the author of Life Is A Phantom K-Mart Horse Starting Up In The Middle Of The Night (Yahara Design Press), a book of prose-poems about both his misspent Florida boyhood and his hard-knock years in Hollywood. He is not afraid to show off his Miami Dolphins tattoo.

John Tottenham is the author of The Inertia Variations (Kerosene Bomb Publishing), a masterful poetic tome on the art of getting nothing done. In his eight-line poems, Tottenham succeeds in “discharging himself of will, while subtly sublimating his own state of stagnation” (Arthur Magazine). The Inertia Variations are currently being adapted into song form by Matt Johnson of The The.

Peter Relic is the recipient of the 2006 Da Capo Best American Music Writing Award. He he has written for publications including Rolling Stone, MOJO, and the Los Angeles Times. His poems (as published in the Nightjar Review) prompted betablog to write: “Utilizing the Malaysian stanza form known as the pantoum (Victor Hugo, Baudelaire, and John Ashberry all used it), Relic toggles between being trenchant and ludicrous, all rendered with a definite sense of craft.”

THE EVENT IS FREE AND ALL AGES ARE WELCOME.

Skylight Books
1818 N. Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Tel: (323) 660-1175
Click here for more info.

Stupid Fox

John Patterson
Friday September 8, 2006
The Guardian

It looks as though Mike Judge, the satiric mastermind behind Beavis and Butthead, King of the Hill and Office Space, just got punked again. By his own studio. For the third time.

Seven years ago, 20th Century Fox dumped Judge’s anti-corporate cri de coeur Office Space, but it became a bona fide smash on DVD, one of the studio’s biggest sellers that year. Last year Fox unceremoniously cancelled Judge’s animated hit King of the Hill, perhaps the most socially precise comedy on American television, before giving it a last-minute reprieve.

Now it’s the turn of Judge’s second feature, the splenetic, pitch-black satire Idiocracy, which wrapped nearly two years ago. Fox didn’t screen it for critics, ran no print ads or trailers, and dumped it on 130 screens nationwide. Apparently the lesson of Office Space’s success went entirely unlearned.

Knowing Judge’s sterling track record as an American satirist, I had to find out what went wrong. Usually a film eliciting such utter contempt from its own backers is a disaster. Far less often, it’s a masterpiece.

The plot: in the future, the educated and intelligent will be massively out-bred by moronic A-type prison-fodder and Nascar idiots, to the point that all knowledge of engineering, agriculture, medicine and literature will be lost to misty memory. Luke Wilson plays ordinary Joe Bowers, chosen to be frozen by the military in 2005, who accidentally wakes up in 2505 to find a broken-down, thuggish America where language has become a patois of football chants, hip-hop slang and grunts denoting rage, pleasure and priapic longing, where citizens are obese, violent, ever-horny and narcotised by consumerism, TV and fast food. Everything’s branded, and people have names such as BMW, Mountain Dew and Frito. TV features the Violence Channel (its signature show: “Ow, My Balls!”) and the Masturbation Channel (“Keepin’ America ‘batin’ for 300 years!”). The President’s a Smackdown champ and porno superstar, and there’s a mulleted wrestler on the billion-dollar bill. And everyone in the future thinks that Joe Bowers, suddenly the smartest man on earth, “talks like a fag”.

There is venomous anti-corporate satire throughout the movie, remarkable mainly because Judge names real corporations. I was astounded – and invigorated – by the sheer vitriol Judge directs at these companies, who surely now regret permitting the use of their licensed trademarks. Like fast-food giant Carl’s Jr, which in 2006 sells 6,000-calorie burgers the size of dictionaries under the slogan, “Don’t Bother Me, I’m Eating”. In Idiocracy, this has devolved into “Fuck You! I’m Eating!” And every commercial transaction has been sexualised: at Starbucks you can get coffee plus a handjob (or a “full body” latte).

Idiocracy isn’t a masterpiece – Fox seems to have stiffed Judge on money at every stage – but it’s endlessly funny, and my friends and I will be repeating certain lines for months (especially while eating), a sure sign of a cult hit. And word got out fast: I saw it last Saturday in a half-empty house. Two days later, same place, same show – packed-out. There’s an audience for this movie, but its natural demographic barely knows it’s out there.

Behind the movie’s satire lie long-term social changes like the stupidisation of the American electorate over 30 years through deliberate underfunding of public education, the corporate takeover of every area of public and private life, and the tendency of the media – particularly Fox News – to substitute anti-intellectual rage and partisan division for reasoned public debate.

Some will argue that Fox has also given us some of the best television of the last 15 years – true – and that if quality sells as well as garbage, then the bottom line is served either way.

So why was Idiocracy dumped? Perhaps because it taps a growing anti-corporate mood in the nation; perhaps because it expertly satirises the jingoistic self-absorption that now passes for public culture. Or perhaps because more people are sick of the modern America that Fox energetically helped to build than the Fox corporation itself is ready to admit.

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Courtesy Joshua B.!

Above: Brion Gysin
I Give You/You Give Me, 1965
Ink on paper
Made during an LSD trip with John Giorno, May 28, 1965

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July 19-September 17
64 East 4th Street

STRANGE POWERS, Creative Time’s summer group exhibition, assembles works by more than twenty internationally acclaimed artists–Pawel Althamer & Artur Żmijewski, James Lee Byars, Sophie Calle & Fabio Balducci, The Center for Tactical Magic, Peter Coffin, Jennifer Cohen, Anne Collier, Christian Cummings, Trisha Donnelly, Douglas Gordon, Brion Gysin, Friedrich Jürgenson (presented by Carl Michael von Hausswolff), Joachim Koester, Jim Lambie, Miranda Lichtenstein, Euan Macdonald, Jonathan Monk, Senga Nengudi, Paul Pfeiffer, Eva Rothschild, and Mungo Thomson–whose works explore the transformative power of art through a variety of magically charged manifestations. While a number of exhibitions have recently looked at aspects of the occult and the spiritual, STRANGE POWERS highlights artworks that are made to actually have a paranormal effect on the world, including spells, talismanic objects, and apparitions conjured and transcribed.

Co-curated by Laura Hoptman and Peter Eleey, the exhibition will be presented on the second floor of an East Village building, rumored to be haunted, Thursday and Friday (4-7pm), Saturday and Sunday (noon–7pm) from July 20 through September 17, 2006, with an opening reception on Wednesday, July 19, 6-7:30pm. Extending the show to Times Square, Euan Macdonald’s video portrait of a healer will simultaneously offer its subject’s positive psychic effects to the wider public on the last minute of every hour on The 59th Minute: Video Art on the NBC Astrovision by Panasonic.

New York Times

“In the Ohio Senate race, Mr. Rove has found himself in a back-and-forth with Senator Mike DeWine. Mr. DeWine has at times resisted Mr. Rove’s counsel that he employ an unrelenting focus on terrorism, exhibiting what other Republicans described as ambivalence about a television commercial depicting the World Trade Center burning.”

“Idiocracy”

Logline: The most average man in the US military is cryogenically frozen in an experiment which accidentally lasts 500 years, awakening to discover society has become so dumbed down he is the smartest man on the planet
Featuring: Maya Rudolph, Luke Wilson
Director: Mike Judge
Writer: Mike Judge and Etan Cohen, story by Mike Judge
Distributor: idiots at Twentieth Century Fox
TOP SECRET Opening Week Release Pattern: Opens at the Atlantic Palace 10 in Alhambra CA, the Allen 16 in Allex TX, the Mansell Crossing 14 in Alpharetta GA, the Atlantic Station Stadium 16, the Parkway Point 15 and the Phipps Plaza 14 in Atlanta, the Austell 22 in Austell GA, the Barton Creek Square 14, the Gateway 16 and the Tinseltown 17 in Austin, the Brea West Stadium Cinemas in Brea CA, the Buena Park Metroplex 18 in Buena Park CA, the Mall of Georgia 20 in Buford GA, the Burbank 16 in Burbank, the Riverstone 15 in Canton GA, the Lakeline Mall Cinemas in Cedar Park TX, the Century City 15 in Century City, the Hollywood 24 in Chamblee GA, the Winnetka All Stadium 21 in Chatsworth CA, the City North 14 in Chicago, the Chicago Heights 15 in Chicago Heights IL, the Conyers Crossroads 16 in Conyers GA, the Covina 30 in Covina CA, the Country Club Hills 16 in Country Club Hills IL, the Crestwood 18 in Crestwood IL, the Showplace 16 in Crystal Lake IL, the Culver Plaza 6 in Culver City, the Dallas 17 and the Keystone Park 16 in Dallas, the North Dekalb Mall 16 in Decauter GA, the Arbor Place 18 in Douglasville GA, the Medlock Crossing 18 in Duluth GA, the Tinseltown 17 in Grapevine TX, the Gurnee Cinemas in Gurnee IL, the ArcLight 15 in Hollywood, the Greenway Palace Stadium 24, the Gulf Pointe 30, the Marq*E Stadium 23, the Studio 30, the Tinseltown USA 290, the Tinseltown Westchase 17, the Willowbrook 24 and the Yorktown 15 in Houston, the Deerbrook 24 in Humble TX, the Irvine 21 in Irvine CA, the MacArthur Marketplace 16 in Irving TX, the Tinseltown 17 in Jacinto City TX, the Katy 19 and the Katy Mills 20 in Katy TX, the Town 16 in Kennesaw GA, the Lakewood Center Stadium 16 in Lakewood CA, the Discover Mills 18 in Lawrenceville GA, the Lincolnshire Stadium 20 in Lincolnshire IL, the Stonecrest 16 in Lithonia GA, the Long Beach 26 and the Pine Square 16 in Long Beach, the Beverly Center 13 and the Bridge cinema de lux in Los Angeles, the Southlake 24 in Morrow GA, the Naperville 16 in Naperville IL, the Norwalk 20 in Norwalk CA, the Block 30 and the Stadium 25 in Orange, the Paseo Stadium 14 in Pasadena CA, the Hollywood Movies 20 in Pasadena TX, the Tinseltown USA Cinemas in Pflugerville TX, the Legacy Cinemas and the Tinseltown USA Cinemas in Plano TX, the Puente Hills 20 in Puente Hills CA, the Round Lake Beach 18 in Round Lake Beach IL, the Criterion 6 in Santa Monica, the Streets of Woodfield 20 in Schaumberg IL, the Schererville 16 in Schererville IL, the Sherman Oaks 5 in Sherman Oaks CA, the Simi Valley Plaza 10 in Simi Valley CA, the Village Crossing 18 in Skokie IL, the Snellville 12 in Snellville GA, the South Gate 20 in South Gate CA, the Southlake Town Center 14 in Southlake TX, the First Colony 24 in Sugarland TX, the Rolling Hills 20 in Torrance CA, the Universal City 18 in Unviersal City CA, the Webster 18 in Webster TX, the Avco Cinema Center in Westwood, the Promenade 16 in Woodland Hills, the Tinseltown 17 in Woodlands TX and the Seven Bridges Cinemas in Woodridge IL (86 locations total) on September 1
MPAA Rating: R for language and sex-related humor
Running Time: 84 minutes
Aspect Ratio: Flat (1.85:1)
Sound Format: Dolby Digital, DTS

‘Idiocracy’
Are things bad now? `Idiocracy’ imagines a future in which people are, well, take a guess. Its satire is spot-on.

By Carina Chocano
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

September 4, 2006

What does Mike Judge have to do to get a movie released and marketed? He could stop making satires as merciless and spot-on as this one, for one thing. His second film in seven years, “Idiocracy,” was completed nearly two years ago and dumped on Friday, reviewless and unmarketed, in six markets not including New York and San Francisco. (Because who could possibly be interested in the long-awaited movie by the director of “Office Space” there?) It’s this sort of vote of no-confidence that gets people wondering — just how bad could it be? Which raises the issue of what “bad” means to the studio that unleashed “Date Movie” and “Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties” on an unsuspecting populace.

Judge has a gift for delivering brutal satire in the trappings of low comedy and for making heroes out of ordinary people whose humanity makes them suspect in a world where every inch of space, including mental, is mediated. The movie would be worth seeing for its skewering of the health system alone — in the future, hospitals will resemble a cross between a chain auto-diagnostic center and a Carl’s Jr., powered by Help Me technology — even if its opening thesis on the moment in history (roughly now) that evolution tipped into devolution weren’t so clear-eyed.

“Idiocracy” is Judge’s pitch-black, bleakly hilarious vision of an American future so bespoiled by rapacious corporations and so dumbed-down by junk culture that the president of the United States is a three-time “Smackdown!” champion and former super porn-star. The movie begins with a comparison of two family trees. A high-IQ couple waits for the perfect time to have a child, a decision they don’t take lightly, while elsewhere, in the trailer park, the dim bulbs breed like rabbits. The high-IQ couple waits too long, the husband dies of stress during fertility treatments, and their line stops there. Meanwhile, the moron population explodes.

Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson), however, is not actually a moron. He’s an average, unambitious, essentially lazy guy biding his time in the Army until he can collect his pension. It’s his perfect averageness (that and his dead parents and no siblings or wife) that make him the perfect candidate for an Army experiment in cryogenics. The idea is to freeze the best soldiers for thawing at a later date, when they’re really needed. Joe is chosen as the guinea pig, and because the Army can’t find a servicewoman to meet the same criteria, they freeze a hooker named Rita (Maya Rudolph) alongside him.

The experiment is meant to last a year, but in that time the base shuts down, is replaced by a Fuddruckers, and Joe and Rita are forgotten for more than 500 years. Meanwhile, humanity devolves to the point where it can’t take care of its basic needs, like dealing with garbage or growing crops, and when Joe and Rita find themselves unearthed during the great garbage avalanche of 2505, they discover to their great surprise that they are the smartest people on Earth.

An IQ and aptitude test he takes in prison (non-payment of his hospital bill) gets Joe taken to the White House, where President Camacho (Terry Alan Crews) makes him secretary of the Interior and entrusts him to fix all the problems. But Joe is focused on getting home and enlists his incompetent lawyer and stupid friend, Frito Lay (Dax Shepard), with leading him, and Rita, to a time machine.

The plot, naturally, is silly and not exactly bound by logic. But it’s Judge’s gimlet-eyed knack for nightmarish extrapolation that makes “Idiocracy” a cathartic delight.

In the future, Fuddruckers will become Buckrudders — and then finally just come and say what it’s been longing to say for years. (It will remain, however, a popular destination for children’s birthday parties.) Carl’s Jr. will adopt as its motto, “Fuck you, I’m eating.” The phone company will have merged with several media companies, the U.S. government and, of course, Carl’s Jr. Costco will house one of the nation’s top law schools. (It will also have warehouses roughly the size of Connecticut.) The streets will resemble Universal CityWalk in bad decline.

And the No. 1 movie in America — well, see it for yourself and find out.