Monday, March 29, 2010

We're Moving the Café


This weekend, I was unable to come to the benefit concert at the Blackfriars Playhouse because I was busy being manly, tearing the crap out of a bar so that we can put it in a big trailer hauled by Ford tough, good ol' Detroit muscle, and take it to a place where it will wait. It will wait until everything is finalized for the new space for our new bar.

It poured rain. Southern rainstorms are quite different from Western rainstorms, and I think about every rainstorm I've ever experienced every time there's another rainstorm. Maybe I'm romantic about that.

We found some tea pots that we loved in a small antique store, so look for those when the Darjeeling Café reopens in its new location.

We found new chairs. They are very pretty and have arms.

You are going to love the new Darjeeling Café. More on that later.

We drove our actor friend, Jamie, to the bus station so that he can go to DC for an audition. I hope he got the part. It was foggy and rainy on Afton mountain, and some people thought we shouldn't drive over it because people who live near mountains are afraid of fog and rain. We got him to the bus station at around 11:20pm, and his bus wouldn't leave until 4am. Life's hard like that sometimes.

It was a very full day.

Today was a very full day, too, but I can't say that I accomplished as much as I did yesterday, though working much harder. I just spent an hour, e.g., constructing a beautiful draft of an enewsletter in in-line CSS only to have it look shit on Outlook. KAAHHHHN!

Microsoft: still evil after all these years.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Friday, March 26, 2010

I always lose at chess with some people

Satrday's a Big Night


This Saturday, like all Saturdays, the Darjeeling Café will be busy and awesome with a few bands and lots of affordable suds and great wine. People love spending their Saturdays with us at the Darjeeling Café. This weekend, they'll have to pay 4 smackers to do it, but that's uncommon. We usually supply the space for free. We don't like being all Cohagen about it, but sometimes air's in short supply.

And the core of Mars is made of ice.

This Sunday, the actors of the American Shakespeare Center are putting on a concert. I will be there. It will be fantastic. Our actors (most of them) are also great musicians, and an acoustic concert at the Blackfriars Playhouse is a great way to ring in the spring.

See you at the party.

I really wanted to see a movie this weekend, but I am broke and don't even have enough money to buy a ticket. Working in the non-profit arts world is rewarding in many ways, but not financially. So I probably won't catch Ghost Writer.

I think I'd like to rent some DVD's and watch them. But the weekend's pretty full.
One more highlight is band practice, which I look forward to very much. I'd really like to watch Total Recall, though.

The Murder Bros.


I'm in a band now. We are called The Murder Bros. We play some BAMF covers of some of your favorite songs, but we also are working on original work. We have 7 original songs already!

I am deriving much more joy from being in a band than I thought was possible. I would say that I should have joined a band ages ago, but I don't think I was ready, and I didn't know how to play guitar ages ago, so I won't. I love being in a band. Here are eight reasons why.

  1. I am getting better at playing instruments because being around talented musicians inspires you and pushes you forward.
  2. I am able to use my poetic training and knowledge to write lyrics that are effective and enjoyable.
  3. I get to hang out with my band mates who are very cool people.
  4. I've always loved performing. Performing with a band is as good, if not better, with a band.
  5. Everyone thinks you're cool when they see you with a guitar case.
  6. Rock n' Roll is now all marketing. I know a lot about marketing and like to use my talents there.
  7. It's artistically fulfilling.
  8. It's just fun.

We are playing to have a good time, but I'd like to treat it like we're going to "make it." We want to make videos and Tshirts, and I even made a myspace for the band. I think our logo is bad ass (I made it).

I think you will love the Murder Bros., and I hope that you support this new adventure.

Brandon Dillard is Leaving Town



He was one of the first people I met in Staunton on my first visit here, but now Brandon is leaving town. Where's he going? Charlottesville.

I have two problems with this.
  1. Brandon is the best bartender in Staunton (no offense to all the other bartenders out there, but he is). He cares about the trade, and knows about the product. Brandon would be an amazing rep for a liquor brand or a vineyard. People as good as him usually graduate to being a wine rep, but I think he'd be better in PR than sales. Losing the best bartender in Staunton is unfortunate. It's bad for me; it's bad for the city.
  2. Charlottesville gets a lot of Staunton's intelligent young people. There aren't a ton of jobs here, and if you're professionally bored, it's one of the only close places to go. Staunton has the potential to keep people like Brandon, but there is still a contingent here that would like to see the city turn into a retirement community. Every time we lose a young person to Charlottesville, it feels like that contingent is winning. Staunton is constantly and precariously squatting on the fulcrum point between retirement community and a place that's totally rad and everyone will want to live in. It wants to be gray or vibrant. There are people vying for both. When someone like Brandon leaves, it turns a little grayer.

I am for the vibrant Staunton. I am always trying to talk more young people into living here. There are awesome things here that I think should turn on many younger people, but not much is being done to get them here.

Send us your young people and entrepreneurs, and Staunton will embrace you!
Forget about Charlottesville!

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Have you seen UNDEAD OR ALIVE?

A western with zombies and cowboys and Indians and forts and a theme song? Seriously? Makes me want to say "Whhhaaaaat? Yeeeaaah!"
Even if you hate Chris Katan, don't you want to see this?



Like all intentionally over-funny zombie movies, this one has its problems, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the best zombie flicks I've seen in a long time. It has a few great zombie deaths, and some parts that were truly hilarious. There's at least one fantastic jump-scare, and the ending is delicious.
Some of the music is a little annoying for its levity and seems a little amateurish for how big everything else seems in this movie, but the theme song is a catchy little ear worm that's got a beat you can dance to.



Once again, the trailer makes this look way dumber than it is. But trust me, you'll love it.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Have you seen THE LOST BOYS?

I watched The Lost Boys last night. I got very nostalgic. Can you believe Cory Haim is dead? Can you believe I used to think his hair and Kiefer Southerland's hair was the coolest hair anyone could ever have?

This movie is still one of the best movies of its time. It's one of the very few movies with a perfect soundtrack, one of the very few vampire movies worth watching, and one of the very few good Joel Schumacher films.

The way the vampires fly is fantastic because you don't see much of it, so it doesn't look cheezey. The gore is choppy and scary without looking fake and lame or overboard or gratuitous. The story is timeless and reads well on many levels. It makes me miss Santa Cruz in particular but California in general. It's strange to have grown up in a place that one sees in films all the time. I think most people don't know what that feels like. Movies take people to places they've never seen most of the time, but I often feel like they're taking me home. This film still has very cozy place in my heart. . . maybe even cozier than it used to.

It might also be the movie that gave me my motorcycle fetish. I need a motorcycle.

Friday, March 12, 2010

Naked Trainwrecks

It's been a long time since I've spiced up the blog with a naked lady, and it's been a long time since I've posted a picture of a trainwreck. So, here's both. The photo comes from a Russian site with several pretty pictures of pretty women. I can't read Russian, so I have no idea what the site is called or what they're selling. But, I like the pictures, and you might, too.



Remember when we were freer? Lately, I've been feeling a little confined and controlled and micromanaged and stressed and un-artistic. I've been thinking a lot about the future and where I'll be in five years and all the things that one thinks about when one is feeling cornered.

This has nothing to do with my recent engagement. In fact, that's the one thing that is pretty perfect. I happen to have found a wonderful woman who is a real partner: the rarest thing a person can find.

This has a little to do with my job, I guess, but it has mostly to do with me. In all of the rush, I've failed to acknowledge and embrace many of the things that make me happy. I forgot to "fuck the bull shit," our mantra when I was a poet. Maybe I'm still a poet. I still write. I just don't publish. what does that say?

One thing is for sure: I am confused. It's good to be confused, methinks, but it's also frustrating. These are confusing and frustrating times for many of us. Things will be better soon; I can feel it.

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Poem about a Hamster

I wrote a poem with a hamster in it. It wasn't a poem about a hamster really, but a hamster played a central role. But then I couldn't stop thinking about Tao Lin while I was trying to edit it. Tao Lin writes about hamsters a lot. I like Tao Lin's hamsters. So I started feeling like I was in some way ripping off Tao Lin. It was maybe like I was unconsciously plagiarizing him and didn't know it until I started working more on the poem. So now I am posting this. It's a pet hamster you can feed. You can tell him to get back on the wheel by clicking on it. If you leave him alone he will drink water and fall asleep after cleaning his face.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Corey Haim


I thought he was the coolest kid in the world when I was growing up in the 80s. I wanted hair like his. Back then, it was possible to idolize the Beastie Boys, RunDMC, Kiefer Southerland, Axl Rose, and Corey Haim all at the same time. I wanted to be them all. The 80's were pretty awesome for a kid.

38 years old.

It's hard not to go into a rant about prescription drugs. We live in a country where the drug dealers with the most money are permitted to run ads on television, the radio, and all other mass media outlets; and the poor people who sell drugs are put away in buildings bought by everyone I just mentioned. And Corey died of an accidental overdose after struggling with an addiction to prescription drugs for many years. How many more people have to die before our relationship with "drug companies" change in America?

In other countries, you don't see ads for drugs anywhere, and due to the incredible power of collective bargaining as a nation, prescriptions cost a fraction of what they cost here. I can only buy my asthma medication half as often as I'm directed to. Even with insurance, it's four times what it cost me in Germany. Where does that money go? Well, TV and magazine ads aren't cheap.

R.I.P., Corey. Your memory lives on in the hearts of every child of the 80's.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Have You Seen ALICE IN WONDERLAND?

Tim Burton's doing an Alice movie staring a bunch of people everyone loves? Where do I sign up? This should be awesome!

This film starts off as a young woman's Bildungs Roman. In fact, Alice states whenever there's a chance that she is the master of her own destiny and will find her own way through the world. I've heard this reading of the Alice stories before, so great. Let's go. The movie takes us to magical places that look incredible in 3D, and sound incredible with voice talents that read like a roster of people you'd love to have a long dinner with and drink some brandy. If it stayed at that, a beautiful, though heavy-handed lesson about how young women should blaze their own paths, it would have been fine. But no. Someone got the idea that it had to end with an epic battle between a character that's not very scary and a "chosen one" and a bunch of stupid little twists that undermine every bit of ground won. Besides, haven't we seen enough effects movies about chosen ones in huge battles?


Alice ends up doing everything that was pre-written for her to do. She follows the path her father and the caterpillar lay out for her, she kills a dragon despite saying she could never harm a living thing because she's peer-pressured into it, then, "to top it all off, "after "standing up against society," she does a ridiculous little dance that was imbecilic enough when the Hatter does it, but is even worse when she does it because it portrays her as a foolish little girl rather than an actualized human being.


Totally disappointing. What also occurs in this movie is a realization that 3D only gets you so far. If you're going to make a shit-sloppy movie post Avatar, people will notice. This was obviously a pre Avatar production. Will Flash Gordon 3D and Clash of the Titans fall victim to the same seduction of 3D? This new 3D tech, relying on digital metrics and polarized plastics rather than the old red/blue thing, is one of the best things to happen to film in a long time. It might even get more people out to the shows for a while... until 3D TVs become cooler/more affordable. But that doesn't get studios off the hook for churning out garbage. Burton's Alice is basically what happens when you get a bunch of marketing professionals to read a bunch of Alice fan fiction.
Was there anything cool about the Alice movie other than some cool voices and effects? Yes. The Tron: Legacy Trailer. I really hope that Disney doesn't blow it. They've had 28 years to think about this one, but let's not expect too much. That said, I haven't been this excited about a sequel since Star Wars: Episode 1, and we all know how that turned out. Am I naive to think that it's possible that it'll be great?

Monday, March 8, 2010

My Birthday Weekend

First, I played music with my band, The Murder Bros. It was the first time we really got some songs together and felt like were making progress as a band. I'm extremely fortunate to have such talented people to play with. I'm learning at a much faster rate with them, and I have a willingness to try things outside of my comfort zone.

My margarita birthday party was awesome. I had some good friends over, and we "celebrated in style." And my fiancee made "salsa non queso," a delightful vegan alternative to the Mexican delicacy. We stayed up late and talked all night, and fun was had by all. Living with a woman who organizes parties and runs a restaurant is one of the greatest things I can recommend doing. You should fall for someone with that in mind.
Jamba's growing a ridiculous mustache
for a contest at his work.
Jamba

The next day, I slept almost the whole day away, but after that, Mary and I went to register our wedding gifts at Target. At Target, they give you a kick ass laser gun to get yourself all taken care of.
Lasers!
Jack Morgan and a laser beamAfter that, we went to Food Lion to get something to quickly make to eat. I showed them what I thought of their canned cocktail weenies. Someone begged me to buy them beer. Food Lion is "pretty ghetto."

Have you seen NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD?

Have you seen Night of the Living Dead?
A hand full of people hunker down in a farmhouse to weather the zombie apocalypse? That's a story worth telling!
"They're coming for you Barbara" is the catch phrase of the movie. Some people say it's the catch phrase that started the popularity zombie movie. I'm not sure about that, but who am I to argue? There are bigger things to argue about with this flick, so let's do that.
I've heard a lot of times that George A. Romero wanted to "say something" about race relations with his 1968 movie. Never mind. Who cares? I don't see anything there, and I'm kind of sick of people looking at movies with authorial intent in mind. Sooo, you know what's awesome?

Ben kills zombies with a tire iron!
Barbara is killed by her own brother, who's the first person to fall victim to the zombie scourge.
Radioactive dust from space is what's causing all this? Space scared the crap out of people in the 60's. Isn't that quaint?
What's the safest spot in your house should the zombie apocalypse occur? Discuss! That should be an assignment in high school classes. Everybody should understand the strongholds of one's domicile.
The zombies are scary as hell. They don't make noise really, they aren't fast, they don't have a ton of makeup, but they're haunting.
An ending that makes you go "man!"

If you haven't seen this movie, you owe it to yourself to see it. If you have seen it, watch it again. There are things in there that still surprise me even after having seen it a dozen times. It's like Hamlet that way.
They're Coming for You, Barbara
All in all, I like this zombie movie over all the others I've seen, and I've seen a lot. There's something to its simplicity and its subtlety that lends it some class. It's funny in its own way without trying to be funny, and for the most part the story's told straight. It trusts its audience, and it trusts its actors, and I think, though it in many ways redefined its genre, trusted its genre in a way that most zombie and horror movies don't.

Friday, March 5, 2010

My Birthday is Tomorrow. Jack Morgan will be 31

It's Friday. At the Darjeeling Café tonight, there's one of the few good blue grass bands playing, and the place is filled with pretty women, and I have an amazing woman I call my own. She treats me well most of the time. She's quite beautiful. She's smart. She's funny. She's got an entrepreneurial spirit I respect and admire. She's friendly, and people like her.

The city of Staunton has treated me well. Everything is great, and I have very little to complain about. I don't have enough money for the things I need. The things I want are few, so I hardly notice them. But for what my job lacks in remuneration, it makes up for in fun and the feeling that I just might be helping make a difference in people's lives. Of course, the government wants to foolishly cut arts funding, a considerable foot-shooting maneuver, but whatever. Things are good.

I still write, though I don't publish as often. I have great friends, though I don't see them as often. I still exercise, but not as much as I'd like since the winter's been rough. I'm still into politics, but not as fervently.

But Everything is really good. All is well. But I'm haunted by the specter of something shroudy. . . something that betrays logic and reason. I can't quite put my finger on it.

Tomorrow is a new day. I have plans that are several and involving many. So I'll be older tomorrow. We're always older tomorrow, but one truly feels it on the anniversary of one's birth. I often get depressed around my bday. Do you?

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Have you seen UNIVERSAL SOLDIER: REGENERATION?

Have you seen Universal Soldier: Regeneration?
Dolph Lundgren and Jean-Claude Van Damme reprising their roles as zombie super-soldiers? Hell yes!



Some might think that this looks stupid. It does. I admit it. But do you remember when you were a kid and watched the first Universal Soldier movie in the theater? Do you remember when the name "Roland Emmerich" didn't turn your stomach? I do. And even though this looks unwatchable, I gave it a try for the heroes of my youth, and I wasn't let down. In fact, it was a really, surprisingly good action movie.

You have to have seen the first film to enjoy much of the tension between Dolph and Van Damme, but that's OK. You can also just enjoy the awesome action. It's made like an 80's action movie director watched The Children of Men and went back in time to blow some shit up and do some karate and some skull smashing.

If that doesn't sound awesome, how about a clone bitches? How about a clone of a zombie being brought to life to kill a ten foot eastern European terrorist? How about a zombie clone who can kind of remember his former life just long enough to try and kill some kids and get his skull blown out by a shotgun shoved down a hole a pipe made in his forehead?

Not enough? How about Van Damme killing everyone with a machine gun until he runs out of bullets and is blown up a little, then pulling out what looks like an automatic glock (you saw one for the first time in one of the Matrix movies and wet yourself at the coolness of it) and killing everyone he sees until that runs out of bullets, then pulling out a Rambo knife and killing mad fools with that until the camera is covered in blood? Did I mention all that's one shot? I didn't? well it pretty much is, and if you can't get behind that, I don't know what to tell you...
...lemme see...
How about there's another universal soldier played by a guy whose middle name is "the pit-bull"? Dude's bigger than the aforementioned terrorist, and he's got a retractable sword thing that comes out of his body armor, and he kills people you actually care about, so that makes him a bad guy. Maybe he's the main bad guy. But with Dolph running around, who cares about him?

And the whole thing starts with a crazy car chase/kidnapping. Hell yes. This is the best zombie super soldier movie ever!


I don't get why this movie was so poorly advertised. It's a shame because I think that most people I know would at least passively really enjoy it. It's not a brainy movie, but it's sufficiently scary for what it is, and it's one of the most enjoyable flicks I've seen in a while.

Check out how lame this preview is:

Have you seen AGAINST THE DARK?


Have you seen Against the Dark?
Stephen Seagal killing Zompires? I'm in! Who wouldn't be?


You have to imagine how thrilled I was to hear that Steven Seagal had decided to go this way with his career. What could be cooler than Steven Seagal slaying zombies with a sword? Well, it turns out almost anything else. This thing was absolute crap.

Steven Seagal is bloated and bored. If you thought his other performances were uninspired, you ain't seen nothing. He's hardly in it anyway, though.
The other characters might have been cool if they'd been developed at all. When they die, you don't care at all. There's nothing interesting about them.
The thing's riddled with plot holes big enough for Mack Trucks. The MacGuffin Device is that the characters have to escape a hospital before the military blasts it with nukes. They all come in from different points, but there's only one way out somehow. For some reason Seagall really wants to save the people, and he's willing to let all his goth-chick slayer helpers die to do it. He's kind of sad when one of them dies, but it's too lame to really register. You never learn any of the slayers' names, I don't think.
The characters call the creatures vampires, but they basically act like zombies, and they're credited as such in the end credits. Is this just semantics? Nah. It's as if the nature of the creatures was an afterthought or maybe was changed when marketers decided that vampires were "in" this season. It's annoying and sloppy.

You'd think this would all be worth it if there were at least some kind of cool one-liner or catch phrase or just some good-ol'-fashioned Seagal comedy, but there's only one, and it's so ridiculous that the belly laugh just forces you to realize you're wasting your time.
I wish they'd gotten a real horror director who took the film too seriously. Accidental comedy would have been tolerable then. . . and there needs to be a couple genuine scares here. There are none. Yawn


Check out this preview, it's much more exciting than the film itself:

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Have You Seen THE CRAZIES?


Have you seen The Crazies?



It's really good, and I can see why it's getting such good reviews. I saw it last night with my friend Jeff in Harrisonburg, which happens to be the only place in 50 miles playing the film. I'd think that they would market it in small city areas more aggressively since it takes place in a small town, but I'm not sure what film production companies are up to these days.

It's a remake of a Romero film, and George A. Romero produced it, and that means it's got to be at least pretty good. The zombies are super scary, though not pure Romero-style. They're kind of a mix between Return of the Living Dead and 28 Days Later. They're fast, they're ugly, but sometimes they're smarter than you'd expect. The characters are amazingly well-developed, considering that the action begins in the first scene of the film. The story is believable. The relationships are as real as can be. There's even a scene in which the soldiers are humanized, and it's touching.

This all makes for a fairly scary movie and a good time out, but I have a couple nits to pick (spoilers):
  • Nothing is known about how "the virus" is passed from one person to another. The problem with the virus-turns-us-to-zombies bit is that we all know a little too much about viruses at this point to play it fast and loose. Dude stabs a zombie in the neck with a knife that has passed through the back of his hand, mixes all up in the zombie lady's blood, and he's not infected by the end? Come now, I can understand not having full-blown zombie, but at least Z.I.V. and a hunger problem?
  • If the military was going to kill everyone indiscriminately from the beginning, why bother with the ruse of sending a bunch of soldiers in to sweep the town, risking the secret getting out? I mean, they put boots on cars, separate families, tie people to beds, and then they torch the healthy people anyway and light the place up with a sub-nuke. Wha? Seems like they could have saved themselves some trouble.
  • Speaking of the military, I know that militariness is a major part of our lives these days, but I'm kind of bored with military stuff being in every movie I see. Everywhere I look, there are killing machines and the military "controlling us" stories. Are we really that afraid of soldiers these days? Remember when every movie was about clones? Before that it was robots. Before that it was diseases. Before that it was space-threats. Now everything's about soldiers killing people. It's getting tiresome.

I totally recommend it, though.

Tonight at the Darjeeling Café


There's a Mad Hatter's Tea Party going on at the Darjeeling Café tonight. The idea is that you come drink some tea and hang out a bit, then go to the Visulite, where they're showing a midnight matinee of the new ALICE IN WONDERLAND movie in 3D. MAD!