the Daily Buckman

the last gatsby

gatsby has moved to---> www.gss.typepad.com

old bug is still lying addled on a rock, like george kennedy in "charade" i pricked him with a pin, but he did not move.

BE RIGHT BACK

SORRY TO BOTH OF YOU THAT READ THIS BAD BOY, BUT SERIOUS RESHAPING IS UNDERWAY AT THE DAILY BUCKMAN.
IN THE MEANTIME PLEASE ENJOY THE MULTITUDE OF PORN SITES AND POLITICAL BLOGS AVAILIBLE ON "THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY"

THIS HIATUS WILL BE BRIEF.
as old bug would say, "the revolution will not be televised"

WORD

distractions part three

you know,
i have no idea what i'm doing here, with this war thing.
it started as a jokey idea about blogs as physical space, became a place to make backhanded remarks about the retarded policies of our war mongering country, and has come full circle to slap me in the face.
today i was going to write "distractions part three" about these marketed ideologies of liberty.
i was going to snark away on bush's latest bag of flaming dogshit on our national doorstep, this idea that iraq was begging for liberty, that we did it for the elections, that somehow this current fiasco compares to the liberation of paris- that the poor men out there are dying for something noble.
i started surfing for images to fuck with. i typed "liberation of paris" into google and clicked "images".
i started hopping around these images and sites, following tangents, getting distracted, and before i know it i'm looking at the dead broken bodies of gunners trapped in the twisted metal turrents of battleships and planes caught frozen mid-explosion- and the empathy begins.
that poor stupid son-of-a-bitch, heading straight into the ocean in half of a flaming airplane. that poor poor guy, his last thoughts frozen in that photograph.
and me sitting so far from all of those grand life or death decisions.
who am i to snark at anything? i want to comment, to express myself. we're all brought up thinking our voice matters, our opinions have an inalienable right to be spoken.
well fuck that.
sure we deal with our lives, such as they are, we know pain, frustration, despair, and maybe it's all relative but, that guy in that airplane. that guy in that airplane.
and that was the tip of the iceberg. keep surfing.
sure, war is war. what're you gonna do? men want war. they need war. read leo strauss.
straussian theory suggests the populace needs an evil to oppose. without it they begin to question their government and ponder deeper issues that rattle the cage and lead only to discordance. he talks a lot about religion, about distractions, etc.
but the idea that i need war because i need something of a grand philosophical scope to distract me- to give rise to my voice and inflate my sense of worth?
that's upsetting, and yet here i am, caught in this conundrum between spouting off about the heedless legislation of men's lives and the fact that i'm hardly one of those men. i'm a spectator.
i'm not the guy in the plane.
i want to help that guy out. but my use of sarcasm in some parody blog that nobody reads is hardly effective, and that being the case, am i not just sitting with that groups of schlubs descibed by strauss?

happy birthday Jean Simmons

-gatsby-

there's a character in my last screenplay that's based directly on an ex-girlfriend of mine combined with jean simmons from the movie, "the grass is greener." (which is a fantastic movie, one of my favorites).

i've loved her from the first time i saw her in the film version of guys and dolls.
my mother raised her boys on hollywood musicals and classic comedies; my brother danny and i, much to her delight, know not just the songs, but quite a few scripts in their entirety- having watched the videos like today's kids watch the barney.
jean was sergeant sarah brown, and her scenes with marlon brando will always make me smile. you could be stabbing me and robbing my house, and if in the background jean simmons was singing "if i were a bell" on the television... i'd be smiling.
if i had a time machine, the first trip would be back to a carefully calculated place at which i stood a chance with jean simmons.

this and a british accent.
uh, killin' me.
so when i was checking out tonights AMC and TCM guide on tivo i noticed a couple of her movies, which led to me finding out today, the 31st, is her birthday. (which designates her an aquarius as well, my god)
anyway, happy birthday jean; you're a godammed goddess...

(a blast of static from the great beyond comes crashing in through the mundane drone of gatsby's masturbatory ode to the cinema of yesteryear..)

Ah, hello fans. No need to introduce myself, as it's painfully obvious who's just dropped by with a bit of unsettling news. I couldn't bear to see my sniveling compatriot Gatsby continue his love affair with this imposter! Some of the worms that I employ in the entertainment industry were horrified when they read through this *cough* posting and found, much to their chagrin, that stupid, stupid old Gatsby had been the victim of some foul, press release trickery. The photographs so lovingly included in this little diatribe are actually retouched FAKES which have been circulating through offices and archives for the better part of thirty years. Since Old Bug always makes it right, even when it hurts, I've included a rare, early photo of Simmons taken before Guys and Dolls. Get it right, Gatsby- we're starting to attract attention.