X-Men 3 is in the works. Finally, we'll get some answers to all the unanswered questions about Hugh Jackman's chest hair.
Action movies owe so much of their formula to blaxploitation.
|
Magneto enslaving humanity |
Blaxploitation villain exploiting drug and prostitute market |
|
Charles Xavier consulting with telepathic machine Cerebro |
Shaft going out on the street to get information from
Huggy Bear |
|
Magneto kidnaps Xavier |
Big Boss kidnaps Shaft's woman |
|
X-Men infiltrate military installation |
Shaft infiltrates the warehouse |
|
X-Men take down the military installation and fly out of
the flooding warehouse |
Shaft takes down the big boss and walks out of the burning
warehouse while the cops run in |
I've been mulling over how to minimize my anxiety. I'm not
willing to make the comedy career moves people are recommending: move
to New York, quit my job. For now I plan to limit my standup work
to going to the writing workshop, no open mics, write some essays, take
the David Sedaris approach.
Maybe this change is a way of giving myself permission to stop
performing. I don't trust my motivations anymore. Maybe I
never have. Putting my sanity first seems like the scary,
positive change that would do the most good.
I pick up the Washington Post Express on the way to work or read my stack of index cards with joke ideas, but nothing's ironic anymore. I view society and politics as the social fallout of the internal war each person has between taking what they want and appearing altruistic so other people give them what they want.
I resent my dysfunctional way of seeing the world more than I can
ever remember. I hoped that at this point in my life I'd get the
payoff of generating some creative work by pouring my experiences through the Basil Filter.
Alas, I think there's some essential depth missing from my
work. I don't make any more sense of the world than anyone else
does. Instead of art that connects my view with others, my work
seems like clinical evidence of an illness or photos taken through a
defective lens: "Here's the effect of the Basil Filter. Notice the warping and the missing information. Next slide please."
Maybe sometimes people are born with bad chemicals
and a little extra intelligence, which by themselves are not
enough to create art. You need to combine the weird way you
see the world with an understanding of how the world sees itself and
you in it. Then you have a bridge of art between two
universes. Or maybe that bridge is language and it's happening
beween you and I right now.
People have told me that they've connected deeply with what I say or
write. I beg them "How?" "Why?" because I want to expand that
effect to the general population. Tell me how to create art that connects with people. Then I can use my filter to distill my experience into a form other people can and want to experience.
