"Psycho Ex-Girlfriend"

My roommate has some old Playboys from 2001 lying around and I was reading one and came across a short article about a man who posted 50 crazy voicemails from his then-girlfriend.

I'd never heard about it before but I get the idea the website was a very big deal at the time. I just listened to all the messages (save one that didn't connect to Windows Media Player and one that was removed from the site for privacy reasons.

The background is the woman was around 37 years-old and the guy, Mark, was in his mid to late 20s or maybe early 30s. They dated for 6-8 months prior to February 2001 when all these voicemails were recorded. Also I take it the man was a cell-phone salesman and she signed a contract with him- he sold her a phone and a rate plan.

If you haven't already, you have to listen to these messages and you have to listen to all of them. They are amazing.

Now half of these voicemails were left in one night (that's my favorite section) and there 's going to be a point where you're going to start feeling very bad for her. She's crying, begging him to call her back, she's hinting that she's gonna kill herself, and you might start to feel guilty for listening. That feeling will pass.

She's desperate and she's grasping at anything she can think of to get a response from him:

She "hurt" herself.

She's gonna need to go to the hospital.

She wants out of her cell contract because he didn't teach her how to use her cell like he promised he would.

She wants her cat back.

Her father has prostate cancer and needs to go in for surgery.

She threatens to call her own mother and ask her to call him.

She says she's accepted an invitation for a date the following night.

And I love the way she goes back and forth:
"If you don't call me back it's over",
"I hate you",
"I love you",
"You obviously don't care about me. I'm moving on", and
"I'll tell them you never taught me how to use the phone cause you were busy boozing it up at the bar".

Trust me, just listen to all of it. And don't get me wrong. The guy, Mark, is not blameless, I'm sure. In fact, I'll bet he's an asshole. But this woman is not so much crazy as she is manipulative. By the end of it all you'll be on Mark's side.

"Shutter Island"

Shutter Island (2010) directed by Martin Scorsese

I saw Shutter Island on the day it came out. When friends asked me about it that night I said that guys who loved The Departed- especially the ones who set the Dropkick Murpheys's "I'm Shipping Off To Boston" as their ringtone- were going to be disappointed.

There are problems with this movie- namely, the story itself. It was based on the Dennis Lehane novel of the same name. The story it tells is flawed; I'm not saying it's done incorrectly. I mean the story itself is no good.

Scorsese did an excellent job but there was no way he could've saved this movie.

Because of the story, the viewer- or at least, me- knows too soon where everything is going (and for me that is very unusual; I never see anything coming a mile away). Here I knew (WARNING: I'm going to give away details here) that Leonardo DiCaprio's Teddy was the crazy one and that things weren't really real. An example: the lighthouse. He became convinced that sinister projects went on in the lighthouse. The lighthouse is not even attached to the island; you have to go through the water to get to it. The hospital is sprawling and there is plenty of room in the creepy Ward C building to do whatever secret experiments they want to do. Why take a prisoner through the water to the lighthouse? And up all those stairs?

And as I said, Scorsese does an excellent job with what he has to work with. If anyone else directed this movie it would be unwatchable. All of his knowledge and skill saves Shutter Island from being a made-for-Sci/Fi Channel Saturday Night Movie. Still, there were mis-steps.

Number One: The music. Ominous, then loud; booming and, at times, old fashioned- it was just over-the-top. Example: As Teddy & Chuck (Ruffalo) approach on the boat the camera goes to a shot of the island. The image is not even slightly scary. But the music tries to suggest otherwise and it just doesn't match up.

Number Two: Leonardo DiCaprio. I know he's Scorsese's new Robert De Niro and I know he's trying. I've just never been a big fan. He's been overrated for a long time, since the days of The Basketball Diaries and What's Eating Gilbert Grape?. Still, I believe he has gotten better. In The Departed, for instance, he was excellent. I read a review of Revolutionary Road and the writer picked up on something I've noticed. DiCaprio does not act like a man would act at that time. A young man in the 1950s would talk in a deeper voice and would not be as quick to cry. For DiCaprio it's always the 1990s. Watching Ruffalo I get the feeling he was watching DiCaprio and thinking about how he should've had the lead role, which he could've done in his sleep.

Number Three: Max Von Sydow is wasted in this movie. I don't mean he was playing beer pong between takes. I mean he's got nothing to work with and nothing to do. They could've cast Ben Stein (but thank God they didn't. I can't fucking stand him anymore. I used to like his game show when it was on, but have you been paying attention to him lately? He made that movie, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, defending the "Intelligent Design Theory" and he's saying that Charles Darwin and science- science itself- led to the Holocaust. Then The New York Times fired him from being a columnist because the endorsments he was doing were a clear conflict of interest and he claims they fired him because of his support for ID).

But anyway, back to my complaints about the story. I did not like the scene where Teddy was interviewing the patients/prisoners. One man had disfigured a woman and Teddy questions him about it. The dialogue was disgusting and upsetting and pointless. Why even include it? It's horrible. It reminds me of the scene in Scorsese's Cape Fear remake where De Niro bites the cheek of that poor woman in the motel room. It's just fucked up.

And lastly, we find out in a long, painful flashback that in fact, Teddy's wife didn't die in an arson fire- Teddy shot her. He came home and found her crazy. He had to fish his young children out of the lake and we have to watch it all. All the while, she's maddeningly crazy and he shoots her dead out of anger and mercy. That's not a "shocking plot twist"; that's just a big downer.

Shutter Island has all the things I love in a mystery/thriller. Characters trapped in a strange setting, a brutal thunder & lightning storm, comfortable chambers with fireplaces, plus Max Von Sydow & Mark Ruffalo- who I like in everything they do. But the events are so sad and heartbreaking- it's such a downer- that you can't enjoy all those classic thriller elements. You just think about those poor kids being drowned by their own mother and then fun-time is officially over.

If you want to see Shutter Island I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. Like I said, it's well-made. It just didn't deserve to be well-made, or made.

March post #42

It's the 27th of March and I've already posted 42 times; this is definitely the most active month yet here at RJ Battles.

Plus I've still got some big plans for March. There are a lot of things I wanna talk about but I'm not going to get into it at the moment- it's half-past midnight and I've gotta work in the morning.

Plus it probably won't be til April, but I'm going to watch and review The Fast & the Furious: Tokyo Drift, and also the remakes of Halloween & Halloween II.

In other news: at work a lot of times I'll see customers and they'll happen to look like certain celebrities. For instance, one of our regulars looks like the old woman from the FreeCreditReport.com ads and last week we had an old Gregory Peck look-alike. I always tell my buddy Amy and sometimes she'll alert me: "Abe Lincoln at table 33", she'll whisper. The guy even had the black stove-pipe hat sitting on the table (actually, the married couple from Sonic Youth came in once; they seemed nice).

Terrarium: Part Eight

If you've seen the terrarium photos you know that I used Christmas tree- shaped cookie jars. I've been alternating between keeping the lids on and keeping the lids off.

For the past couple days I've had the lids on and the basil terrarium had moisture all over the glass; I decide to take the lid off this morning and when I came home ALL of the basil sprouts were withered. I could barely make them out they had withered so badly.

I'm crushed. I dropped in five new seeds and didn't even bother pressing them down. I'm gonna keep the lid off and hope for the best. I'd like for the existing sprouts to bounce back but they look so bad.

The good news is that the spider plants are thriving, as are the artichoke-type plants I added last weekend. By the way, if you happen to know what they're called please let me know. Thanks.

I saw this

Sometimes in high school art class there would be strange statements written on my table. The ones I liked I'd put in notes to my friend.

At one of the message bords I go to someone's signature is "I hate how the reptile dreams it's a mammal. Scaly monster: be what you are!!"

Money

Today I went to H&R Block and they did my taxes. I could've done them myself but I was hoping that they would somehow cut me a check immediately after doing my return.

No. I'm waiting 8- 16 days. But I got an email telling me the IRS has recieved and accpted my return. I already know I'm going to be checking my status several times a day for the next two weeks. It's kind of a comforting thought- knowing exactly what will happen.

Today I borrowed 50 cents from a friend so I could get a roll of buttermilk biscuits (see RJ's Buttery Biscuits) so I could have lunch/ dinner today.

New banner

I'm having serious doubts about the RJ Battles banner above. I do want to have the image be something I made and not just another records sleeve. And I like that the terrariums are showcased.

But something seems to be missing.

Also, I'm a litle concerned about the basil that I planted in the first terrarium. Half of the 12 look good; the other half are leaning over or looking weak. I don't know what I can do or I can do anything.

Terrarium: Part Seven

This is my favorite terrarium photo.

Terrarium: Part Six

Terrarium: Part Six
Pictures

My friend came over tonight and we got a Buffalo Chicken pizza- spicey chicken tenders, gorgonzola cheese, and caramelized onions. She brought her dijjy cam so I can finally share my terrariums with you.

Clementine

This is Clementine. She belongs to my parents, but she'll always be my precious angel. Whenever I visit, I always take Clem out for a walk around the neighborhood. And she attacks the leash; she'll take it in her mouth and she'll thrash from side to side like she's caught a snake and she's trying to snap its spine. It's adorable.

And for some odd reason Clementine loves biting my nose. In fact, if I lay on the floor she'll go nuts and try to attack it. A couple times she ran to the other side of the room and then charged at it. She actually got a running start before chomping on my nose.

I love this collage. The top two pictures were taken by my older brother; the bottom two were snapped by my dad. In the top left she was almost still a puppy; the top right is her outside in springtime. In the bottom two she's on the couch with my younger brother and my niece. I love the face she makes in the bottom left photo- she looks like Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

I have some other pictures to share later. You've got to see Clementine in the red cape she wears sometimes in the winter (she hates the cold).





Note: Click on the picture above to enlarge. That way you can see the cuteness in greater detail.

Night Shift: Part One

Night Shift (1978) Stephen King

My friend is reading Under The Dome, the latest novel from Stephen King and I looked for it today at the library. For the past few years I've been reading all of King's book within a year of their release: Cell, Lisey's Story, & Duma Key; I liked them all.

Up until about 2002, the only King books I'd read were The Shining and Gerald's Game. Now I've read most of them, aside from Insomnia, Rose Madder, The Green Mile, and the Gunslinger series.

I've mentioned here before that I think that critics are very unfair to King. I do agree that often times the endings of his stories are disappointing but other than that I can't find fault.

Because he's a popular writer and he's sold millions of books, people like to say that he's not really a writer, that his books aren't "literature". This is usually said by people whose own books sink like stones in the marketplace.

The thing is, Stephen King is a very talented writer who cares about his craft. Have you ever tried writing a novel? Or have you ever tried reading a novel that was so bad you couldn't finish it? It is one of the most difficult things in the world to write even one page that people will want to read all the way through. Multiply that page by 100, by 300, by 1,200.

Kristin Hersh has been releasing new songs on the Cash Music page and for each one she writes about how it came to be. The songs, she says, already exist; it's her job to bring them into the world and present them the way they want to be heard.

In King's non-fiction book On Writing, he says he believes that stories are pre-existing, like fossils, and he tries to take them out of the ground as carefully as possible. He tries to work from situations and not plot- he compares plotting to using a jackhammer to get a fossil out of the ground.

There probably isn't a huge overlap between King's readers and Hersh's listeners but I think it's funny that both approach their craft in the same way.

I didn't find Under The Dome today but I did see a collection that I'd seen there before. It's a big, thick book containing King's first three novels: Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, and The Shining. I've already read those, but today I noticed that it also has Night Shift.

Night Shift is my favorite short story collection. It's got "Quitters, Inc.", "The Last Rung on the Ladder", "Jerusalem's Lot", "One for the Road", "Children of the Corn", and maybe my favorite Stephen King story ever, "Strawberry Spring".

If nothing else, get this book from your local library and read "Strawberry Spring". It's perfect storytelling.

In the summer of 2005 a good family friend died. He was friends with my grandparents and my mother's aunt and uncle from Italy, and when I lived on the Cape we got to be friends. My uncle was in charge of his estate and he asked my father and I to come for a week and paint the house so he could sell it.

We were in the empty house from Monday till Thursday. The only thing there was his bed and luckily there wasn't a boxspring- it was one mattress on top of another. We took it apart and I pulled my mattress into one of his son's old bedrooms. I'd brought along Night Shift and after dinner I'd go off to my room to read.

The second night we were there, there was a gigantic thunderstorm, the biggest one I've ever experienced. It happened well after midnight. The thing is: it was so loud that it woke me up. Not only did it wake me up- I actually woke up like people do in the movies; I bolted upright and looked around. I've never heard thunder so loud. It sounded like the storm was rolling right up 6A.

I'll always remember that week painting with my Dad, my friend's old empty house, the brutal thunderstorm, and Night Shift.

"Los Angeles"

Los Angeles (1993) Frank Black

As I said before, I love the "Frank Black" logo painting that is used in the Frank Black CD booklet and the cassette jacket. These sleeves use that image a little.

"Frank Black" cassette

Frank Black (1993) Frank Black
cassette

I have the cassette, though mine is slightly different than this one.

I love the "Frank Black" logo painting.

Oddballs

Oddballs (2000) Frank Black
B-side collection

I never bought this because I had most of the songs already. A year after it came out, though, a friend burned me a copy and I fell in love with "Can I Get A Witness", plus it was neat to hear the slightly different versions of some songs, like: "At The End Of The World", "Oddballs", and "Anouncement".

I'm glad that now I finally get to read the notes that FB wrote for this collection (click on the picture to enlarge; it should be bigger and easier to read).

"Headache" disc one

Headache (1994) Frank Black

4AD would often put out two EPs for the same single, but with different B-sides on each so that the song would chart higher.

I know it was done for Belly's "Gepetto" and Throwing Muses's "Firepile" (which needed all the help it could get. Sorry, it's an OK song, and I really like the Remix version but there were better options for a single).

This was the first CD I ever bought and I had to play it on my brother's CD player when he wasn't around because I wasn't allowed in his bedroom.

1 Headache
2 Men In Black
3 At The End Of The World
4 Oddball

"Headache" disc two

Headache (1994) Frank Black
Disc Two

1 Headache
2 Hate Me
3 This Is Where I Belong
4 Amnesia

"Headache" Three; 7" and 10"

Headache (1994) Frank Black
7" b/w "Headache(nyc version)"
10"


Note: I love the back cover of the 7". The image on the top right is awesome.

"Hang On To Your Ego"

Hang On To Your Ego (1993) Frank Black

I bought this and I loved the B-sides. Frank Black fans already know the story of the Beach Boys's version from the Pet Sounds re-issue and that the nmusic from "Surf Epic" was used for the title track from the Frank Black & the Catholics's Dog In The Sand record.

I put the two instrumental;s on a mix tape and I remember lying in the sand on Lighthouse Beach in Chatham, MA listening to it on my walkman late at night and looking up at the stars.

Frank Black promos

I bought the radio intereview disc- the one with the round black, white and orange label. It was really good, tracks from the solo album, acoustic songs done during the interview. I think there must've been an agreement that the Pixies not be mentioned.

Snus

I saw today that Marlboro has copied Camel and started selling their own Snus. Who is using this nasty shit? And who's jamming to my nasty groove?

No really, I mean, I've tried it, but only because last year Camel was giving it away free when you bought a pack of cigarettes. I tried one pouch, it was nasty, and I threw them all out and now I use the tin to store matches.

"Kiss Them For Me"

Kiss Them For Me (1991) Siouxsie & the Banshees

For a song that came out in 1991, Kiss Them For Me holds up very well. If it were released today it would sink like a stone with a car battery tied to it, but if someone did happen to hear it, they would like it.

I didn't realize at the time that it was written about Jayne Mansfield but one night I was looking through the TV section and saw that there was a 1957 movie with the same name so I figured there was some kind of connection.

Jayne Mansfield was a movie star in the 1950s and 60s. Her mansion was called "The Pink Palace" and was decorated with cupids, a fountain that shot pink champagne, and had a heart-shaped swimming pool. She died in a car crash "...on the road to New Orleans" with her daughter Mariska Hargitay ("Law & Order") in the backseat.

Kathy Griffin wrote about Hargitay in her autobiography, Official Book Club Selection. Griffin used to teach classes at the Groundlings in LA and at the start of the season her mother was looking over the student list.

"Hargitay! Mickey Hargitay's DAUGHTER? Holy Mary mother of God, JAYNE MANSFIELD'S KID?"

So anyway, on the first day class they did one of those trust-building exercises you've seen a thousand times on sitcoms where one person falls backwards and everyone else is supposed to catch them. When it was Mariska's turn, somehow everyone was distracted and she fell "like a ton of bricks".

That night Griffin told her mother who said, "As if she hasn't been through enough".

Kiss Them For Me got me into Siouxsie & the Banshees and I bought their Superstition LP, and later, Peepshow and Twice Upon A Time: The Singles.

And that's where it ended. I did buy the cassingle for "Face to Face" from the Batman Returns soundtrack. I didn't buy their next album, even though I liked the lead single "O Baby".

By the way, the cassingle had a cool B-side: "Return". I used to love listening to it when I'd take my nightly walks around town with my walkman. Year later I got the CD single which had a lame remix, but also an extra B-side called "Staring Back". It wasn't as good as "Return" but the cool thing was, "Staring Back" faded into "Return" so they were almost like the same song. I like that, especially on Kristin Hersh's Strange Angels album when "Stained" goes right into "Shake". The perfect mix.



Note: Above is a well-known photo of Mansfield and Sophia Loren.

Note 2: I'm going to try to post a link to the music video but I don't know how. Wish me luck.

Note 3: The top two pictures are just that: pictures. No, I wasn't able to post a youtube link. Some (all?)of you are reading that and thinking I must be pretty dumb. Yeah.