A Bit of Aw-Shucks, Just-Folks, Home-Spun Philosophisin’

It may be true that all of my snark and shit-talk is nothing more than an elaborately-woven suit of chain mail worn to protect a sensitive soul. This particular form of expression, blogging about creative works that could bear the highly-frickin'-subjective label “garbage,” did not at first seem to me to be a viable means of self-discovery (as opposed to, say, keeping a journal, writing poetry, or depicting traumatic moments from your childhood in the medium of Crayola on paper,) but here I go a-self discoverin’. What brand of masochist would thrust upon himself the onus that I have chosen? Some days I feel that this project is a form of self-flagellation and that I should stop it altogether and, say, learn to love myself or something. Sure, it can be fun to tear movies to shreds, but I’d be lying if I said that I did not press on with this sometimes rather frustrating task bearing a small flicker of hope that I will stumble upon a gem. These gems can appear in one of two ways: 1) A movie will be so godawful that it will provide the viewer with buckets full of unintentional comedy. 2) A movie will actually be good. I’ll take the latter any day (especially since I don’t always have the luxury of watching these with a couch full of friends and a fridge full of beer--I love my dog, but she doesn’t always get my jokes . . . And try to get her to pay attention to anything in which rabies or werewolves don’t figure heavily into the plot). Laughing at some of these movies sometimes makes me feel as if I’m picking on someone less fortunate--it’s like giving a dyslexic a hard time for having trouble reading. It’s just not cool. Give me a good movie any day. I’m only human--who doesn’t love a pleasant surprise?

And while it is true that I do seek out material for the blog in the lower reaches of the high-art/low-art dichotomy, I do not sit down to watch every movie with Garbage Day in mind (Bresson’s Pickpocket, which I watched recently, may not be my favorite movie in the world--I did like it--is obviously not appropriate subject matter for Garbage Day. Number one, it’s a respected and influential film. Number two, I certainly wouldn’t, in this particular instance, go against the general consensus and slap the label “garbage” on it). I guess like anyone else I need time to switch off, to watch simply for the sake of watching . . . I am by no means a workaholic, but I sometimes marvel at my decision to turn something that has every potential to be a passive, mindless activity into a form of responsibility and work.

I have a tendency to skew toward negativity. It’s only natural that I see this blog as a facet of this trait. I think of D.T. Suzuki’s interpretation of Zen Buddhism, that it is a means of negating everything until only one thing remains--an affirmation. It is a means of experiencing the positive through an ongoing negation--of cutting through the bullshit and getting down to the nitty-gritty. Destroy everything and see what remains . . . a difficult concept to grasp, perhaps, especially because it’s easily misinterpreted as being a form of nihilism. Absolute negativity is certainly not the aim of zen, nor is it the aim of Garbage Day (if you look at Samantha’s reviews you’ll soon see, sweetheart that she is, how quickly she’ll recommend a book or movie in spite of its tremendous shortcomings). Let’s not forget that eternal positive waiting at the bottom. This is, after all, a celebration of all things garbage-y, although I must admit that I may not be as quick as Samantha to throw on the party hat and start tossing confetti (but, in my defense, Hellgate and Hard Rock Zombies back-to-back was one hell of a test of my stamina). There is something beautiful, something exquisitely human, in the reach and miss, in the way that what we accomplish is never quite exactly what we set out to do--this little essay is no exception. All creative endeavors are of one degree or another an exercise in vanity. Sometimes it adds to the charm (like John Fasano’s balance of bad rock and cheesy horror in his self-penned Black Roses--are we seeing flashes of Fasano in the hunky, literate Mr. Moorhouse?) and sometimes it just goes over the top (as in John Fasano’s direction of Jon Mikl Thor’s self-congratulatory and falsely clever script for Rock ‘n’ Roll Nightmare--we are definitely treated to a more than a heapin’ helpin’ of the psyche of Mikl Thor, who plays the role of hero, rock star, and godlike weaver of metaphysical mind-fucks all rolled into one). It’s a fine line, but sometimes there’s nothing quite as satisfying as not pulling any punches when it comes to punishing such breaches of filmmaker-viewer etiquette.

All right . . . that’s enough navel-gazing for now. More reviews are on the way--including (you guessed it) a positive one!