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without a beer in my hand
Friday, March 11 2011
When I went to my computer this morning, I had a thought that I don't always have when doing so: "What kind of fucked up things have happened in the world since I last sat at my computer?" Usually the answer to this question is "not much beyond the existing fucked-up things." But this morning was different: an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Ricter scale had hit northern Japan. I knew immediately that this was a huge story, and it only grew huger throughout the day as pictures of the devastation came in. Most of the damage was caused not by the earthquake itself (which was so powerful that people standing outdoors were knocked to the ground) but by the resulting tsunami, which was seen rolling in endlessly at the height of treetops. This was the kind of disaster that, while possible, is statistically unlikely to occur during the narrow band of history when everyone has a handheld camera capable of capturing it.
This evening Gretchen and I drove to Rosendale to take part in two activities. The first of this was to watch a documentary called Strongman at the Rosendale Theatre. It portrayed the inadvertantly-ironically-self-named Stanless Steel, a man with such powerful finger strength that he can actually bend coins in his fingers. Stan tries to make the most of his freakish strength, and though he tries, he's not a good self-promoter and there's little demand for demonstrations of his skill. And unlike a magician, a strong man can only really perform one stunt per show, and once it's over it would seem, at least to a person like me, as if there had been a lot of build up for relatively little satisfaction. Still, Stan did manage to get small crowds of locals to see him lift a dump truck with his feet or to stab a nail through two New Jersey license plates (although that latter demonstration looked to be entertainment at a kiddy birthday party in a particularly soulless McMansion).
Stan is something of a babe in the wilderness through all of this, exploited by managers in the show biz world, and working a day job scrapping old steel structures to support an ambitionless, skilless girlfiend named Barbara and often her cruel little sister as well. We see him going back and forth between his home in a dreary Jersey development and his parents' cluttered place out in the suburbs, where, amid all the clutter, is a still-living (though seemingly post-conscious) grandmother, her mouth permanently agape. In addition to the grandmother, there's also Stan's brother Michæl, a permanent fuckup rarely seen without a beer in his hand. Though at some point he transitions from beer to crack cocaine.
I found myself paying attention to the passing of the seasons as the film progressed. There they'd be in their jackets out in the back smoking and drinking. Then the snow would fall. And then it would be summer and I'd see all that green and I'd feel jealous because that weather is still two months away.
After the film, Zach Levy, the guy who filmed, edited, and produced it out and answered our questions until we didn't have any more. The film had taken him nine years to make, and he'd first met Stan on a filming gig when Stan's stunt was to hold two ropes to keep a pair of Cessna airplanes from taking off. The amount of time Zach spent with Stan explains the camera-ignoring comfort Stan and friends demonstrate in nearly all the scenes, the kind of access that only comes with a prolonged embed.
The second thing Gretchen and I did in Rosendale was to attend a big benefit concert being held at the Rosendale Community Centre. Someone in the community is suffering from multiple sclerosis, and the concert was being held to raise money for that cause, hopeless though it be. We walked in the door and all I could think was, "Where did all these young adults come from?" It was the same population as one sees at a BRAWL (women's arm wrestling event), but times two or three. And they were all dressed to get laid. Suddenly I felt very old and very sober. It's torture being in a scene like that without a beer in my hand, but I had been given the impression that we wouldn't be staying long. Eventually we found Deborah and then Michæl (our KMOCA people) and talked with them for a bit (mostly about suffering at the hands of illicit building cannibals and also recent March melt flooding — as opposed to the kind that comes from earthquake tsunamis). But I wanted to go, so Gretchen and I left about 30 seconds into the performance of a punk rock band whose singer we all know.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?110311 feedback
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