"Closet chef Jake Gyllenhaal is developing a new organic restaurant venture with top cook Chris Fischer.
Sources claim the movie star once promised himself he'd open a top-end eatery if his acting career took off by the time he was 30. He's 27.
And Gyllenhaal, who has made regular appearances on top chef Mario Batali's hit U.S. cookery show Molto Mario, is getting serious about cooking up a restaurant.
A pals tells America's Life + Style magazine that Gyllenhaal and pal Fischer are looking at real estate in Los Angeles - with a view to opening their own place.
The insider says, "Cooking is his (Gyllenhaal) big hobby and his passion."
Reports suggest Gyllenhaal is even planning a summer vacation cycling tour of food-lovers mecca Tuscany, Italy with his girlfriend Reese Witherspoon - to seek inspiration for his new restaurant". Source: www.imdb.com
"So, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali (of restaurant and Food Network fame), and a Spanish movie star and cook book author Mark Bittman are teaming up to host a documentary-style show in which they travel through Spain eating food. It is random, very random. Gwyneth apparently speaks fluent spanish, Mario and her have amazing chemistry and it all begins and ends with WILLIE NELSON singing. There is no voice over that soothes me saying “yeah, this is really strange and incredible and quite the paella of people and places but it is going to be awesome!”
must say that Mario Batali fascinates me, and I think it is because he carried his girth around so well. The dude is fat but has the attitude of a skinny dude with a fat soul, if that makes any sense. I first got into him NOT through television but rather while reading the book “Heat” by a big time New Yorker writer. I can’t put my finger on what exactly fascinates me so much, but this show opens up a brand new arena. An arena which also features Frank Gehry and Michael Stipe". Source: Jessicatillyer.wordpress.com
"TMZ spotted gorgeous Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Witherspoon out together on a little shopping trip in NYC and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. These two are as about as exciting as a dentist appointment! But did you catch that guttural sound emitted by Jakey as he got in to the car? Either they've got a barn animal in the car, or Jake is learning a new language, and it's called Mule". Source: www.tmz.com
"Since I last blogged at you, life has brought wackness and dopeness in equal measure. Barnabas, my copilot and set buddy, died in July. It was sudden and devastating. I miss my little gentleman terribly.In much happier news, my brilliant friend Lorene Scafaria debuted her first film, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist at the Toronto Film Festival. I've noticed a fistful of assholes on IMDB are accusing this movie of being a Juno copycat. Perhaps the marketing folks at Sony are unlikely Juno-philes (yes, we've all seen that hand-lettered font before) but N&N is based on a popular book and was filmed months before Juno was released. Also, it's nothing like Juno, unless a smart female protagonist is enough of an anomaly to warrant comparison. (Jesus, I hope not.) Anyway, see the movie on October 3. It is like, classic good. I am so proud of Lorene.Bend thine ear:
I am not Charlie Kaufman or Sofia Coppola (much as I supplicate at their Cannes-weary feet.) I'm not Paul Thomas Anderson. I'm not even Paul W.S. Anderson. I am middle-class trash from the Midwest. I'm a competent nonfiction writer, an admittedly green screenwriter, and a product of Hollywood, USA. I am "Diablo Cody" and if you're not a fan, go rent Prospero's Books again and leave me the fuck alone.
I may have won 19 awards that you don't feel I earned, but it's neither original nor relevant to slag on Juno. Really. And you're not some bold, singular voice of dissent, You are exactly like everyone else in your zeitgeisty-demo-lifestyle pod. You are even like me. (I, too, loved Arrested Development! Aren't we a pretty pair of cultural mavericks? Hey, let's go bitch about how Black Kids are overrated!)
I'm sorry that while you were shooting your failed opus at Tisch, I was jamming toxic silicon toys up my ass for money. I get why you're bitter. I took exactly one film class in college and-- with the curious exception of the Douglas Sirk unit—it bored the shit out of me. I also once got busted for loudly crinkling a bag of Jujubes during a classroom screening of Vivre Sa Vie. I don't deserve to be here. We've established that. But I'm here. Five million 12-year-olds think I'm Buck Henry. Accept it.Listen: I've been telling stories my whole life. Even when I was a phone sex operator, I was the Mark Twain of extemporaneous jerk-off fiction. I took every perspiring creep on a fucking journey. I don't know how to do anything else.
I'm going to make more movies and shows. I doubt they'll all be good, but that's the nature of this life. Even though the public only knows me from one book, one movie, and several aborted blogs, I've spent the last few years hustling like Iceberg Slim out here to prove myself professionally. The people I currently work for, and with, are more than pleased with my post-Juno output. My pilot was so good (thanks, Toni Colette!) that it got picked up for series. That is rare, children. That is blue-rare.
In summation: you try it.
This is the last I have to say on the subject, unless I'm provoked by a journalist in which case I'll gladly reload. With relish, as Betty Rizzo might say. That said, I'm a 30-year-old woman with a dwindling interest in blog culture, and I don't have time to address this bullshit every time one of my projects comes out. I'm in love, I just bought a house, and my boss made E.T. I kind of have to focus on reality". Source: blog.myspace.com
"If you don't already know his name, memorise it now, because Newark's Toby Kebbell seems set to become an A-list film star and a household name. Having cut his teeth on Dead Man's Shoes, Alexander and Match Point, he's currently starring in the title role in Guy Ritchie's RockNRolla. Soon to appear in Cheri alongside Michelle Pfeiffer and The Prince of Persia with Jake Gyllenhaal, the former Carlton Television Workshop student speaks exclusively to Jo Roberts about fame, women, family – and giving Michelle Pfeiffer a rub down.
Where are you living and working at the moment?
In London, working on The Prince of Persia. After RockNRolla I was out of work for 11 months, to shoot down the idea of the glamour. Then I was in Morocco for two and a half months learning to ride on a horse and fight with an axe for the Prince of Persia, but these big projects go on and on, so I'm shooting at Pinewood now. My co-star Jake (Gyllenhaal) is a lovely fella. He's been training hard and pumping iron; he's all about doing his acting right. It's more like doing a marathon than it is like acting, you're delivering these lines that are a bit obscure and you wouldn't normally say like (adopts OTT theatrical voice) 'The mystical dagger of time is going to save us all!' So it's a tricky one, but Jake's got the bull by the horns. We sat around and had a bite to eat a couple of times. He's a typical Yanky chap. Is there any truth in the rumour that you're dating Gemma Arterton, your co-star in both RockNRolla and The Prince if Persia?
No. I wasn't in any scenes with Gemma and we weren't on set together at any time, but we did spend time learning to horse ride together for The Prince... The press love to whack out a story and that's fair enough, but my girlfriend, Ruzwana, was a bit miffed about it. She's a lovely girl and, of course, she's upset when someone says you're having an affair out in Egypt, but I'd never been to Egypt so she knew it wasn't true. [...]
You've starred in films with Angelina Jolie, Scarlett Johanson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Jake Gyllenhaal. Do you feel like you've made it now, or do you want to become a household name yourself?
It would be lovely to be a legend of the screen. I don't know if I'll ever get there; you've got to thank your lucky stars and say 'I've been blessed for where I've got to'. I'm at a lovely place now, I'm very happy. I don't have to paint walls or serve tables, I just get to act professionally. But if I go back there, then that's what'll happen. It would be heart breaking. I've not achieved what I want to achieve, I have my own big aspirations. I'd love to be considered a very versatile actor like Alec Guinness, a man who can play many, many parts. I'd love to do a 1920s gangster flick with trenchcoats, trilby hats and tommy guns, but I'd also love to do a Western. I'm doing Prince of Persia at the minute so I'm riding horses and am very lucky to be doing an action film, but I still have lots of dreams".
"Peter Sarsgaard on the Group Insanity That Settled Over the Cast: Director Sam Mendes says there definitely was a kind of shared insanity that affected the cast during the filming of “Jarhead.” Asked to share a personal example of what Mendes was referring to, Sarsgaard said, “I keep telling them about other people, but Jake reminded me of one that I did. I wasn't drinking for the first half of the movie because I was trying to get fit quickly, because for 'Flightplan,' I kind of didn't care what physical shape I was in. It's not like I gained weight for the movie, but sometimes I'll lose weight for a movie. I had a couple margaritas... Jake started drinking beer at that point and I had some margaritas, maybe only two or three. And there was a thing that was like a fountain in the middle of the courtyard. We're staying at this not-very-nice hotel that had like a fountain and it looked like it could be a pool, but it was not actually a swimming pool. And he says I finished my margarita and I put it down. He said he was in mid-conversation with me and he said I just walked over to the edge of the pool and with all my clothes on, just walked into the pool and went underwater for a little bit and then came up and walked into my room totally wet. And he said he was in the middle of talking to me about something. So that actually happened, I realized, and I sort of blocked it out”. Source: movies.about.com
"Weil's designs have been worn by all kinds of celebrities from Clarke Gable to Matthew McConaughey. The Rockmount pearl snap was even the shirt of choice for Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal on the set of Brokeback Mountain. We figured it was Wrangler.
Apparently, he managed to reach the ripe old age of 107. We wonder if he followed the Ernest Borgnine fountain of youth method? Source: www.stylelist.com
"Brokeback Mountain, before it is any other thing, is essentially a pastoral, a hymm to the outdoors and the outdoor life and living in a tent with the one you love, surrounded by the rugged beauty of the craggy mountains all around.Ledger and Gyllenhall are (after a fashion) the spiritual descendants of Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call, mourning a diminished frontier and seeking to leave civilization behind". Source: txreviews.com
A musical video featuring images Michael Cera in "Arrested Development", "Clark & Michael", "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" interview, etc., and the songs "Just a kid" and "Someday Soon" by Wilco.
Reese has been chosen as one of the Ten Best Dressed of 2007 according to People Magazine.
THE SOPHISTICATE
2007 brought out the best in Reese Witherspoon. From her spectacular Nina Ricci gown at the Oscars to her simple black ensembles on the streets of L.A., this mother of two shows us less is definitely more. Source: www.people.com
BEST STRAPLESS Reese Witherspoon showed that single is sexy in her yellow Nina Ricci dress at the Golden Globes. Source: www.people.com
KIRSTEN DUNST The fashion-forward star took a misguided look back with a vintage gown and flowered headband at the Met Costume Institute Gala in New York City in May. Source: www.people.com
A musical video featuring images of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist", starring Michael Cera and Kat Dennings, and the song "I'm always in love" by Wilco.
The 37-year-old—who last year relocated to Park Slope with his actor wife and their baby girl, Ramona—is about to unleash that scene-stealing charisma in a production of The Seagull at the Walter Kerr Theatre, opening September 25. A few weeks before his Broadway debut, Sarsgaard spoke to us over the phone from his Brooklyn townhouse.
Time Out New York: It sounds like you’re multitasking. What have I caught you doing? Peter Sarsgaard:Right now I’m making some meatballs. I have the mixture put together and I’m thinking I’m going to make the balls a little bit smaller than usual. I’m thinking Ping-Pong size.
TONY: Mmm…meatballs. Not a bad way to spend your free time. Peter Sarsgaard: In my free time—that’s a phrase that doesn’t really exist. Most of what I do in my free time these days is, you know, be a father.
TONY: How are you liking Park Slope so far? Peter Sarsgaard: Very much. The West Village, where I had lived, paid a price when the Gansevoort Hotel and all those things went in. A lot of taxi traffic and a lot more paparazzi.
TONY: Why not use a disguise? Ape suits are pretty cheap these days. Peter Sarsgaard: Whenever I see somebody in sunglasses and a hat I always assume they’re famous. [Pauses] An ape suit? That would really throw them off.
TONY: Totally. Speaking of costumes, I assume this production of The Seagull finds you in bird garb, shouting, “Caw! Caw! Caw!” Peter Sarsgaard: Absolutely. And dropping clams onto rocks to see if they split open.
TONY: Your Tony Award awaits. Do you have any preshow superstitions? Peter Sarsgaard: Am I superstitious? I mean, I’m Catholic—so yeah, deeply. But I have done things that were a little OCD, yes.
TONY: Like what? Peter Sarsgaard: I’d have to say something a certain number of times. Sometimes I’d say it loud enough so I could be overheard. And then I couldn’t explain it to anyone.
TONY: Has it ever freaked out your costars? Peter Sarsgaard: The only person who commented on it was Chloë Sevigny. She tells people it’s something I do all the time. I don’t think it is, but I certainly did it around her on Boys Don’t Cry.
TONY: What was it you were doing? Peter Sarsgaard: I’d say “motherfucker” five times. And then, if I was asked about it, I would act like it didn’t happen.
TONY: Awesome. Did you do anything to prepare for your big make-out scene with Liam Neeson in Kinsey? Peter Sarsgaard: We did a movie together called K-19: The Widowmaker. That’s how we prepared for it. You know, it’s funny. You constantly end up in strange situations with people as an actor—and you just do it. God knows they’re paying you enough.
TONY: But as a straight guy, wasn’t it hard to go through with it? Peter Sarsgaard: It wasn’t as hard as, say, running around with all my gear on in Jarhead. I’d rather go for an awkward moment than physical exertion any day. The only thing that I think [male actors] get freaked out about when they have to do something like kiss a guy in a movie—when to their knowledge they’re straight—is that they’re afraid they’re going to be turned on. And if you’re not afraid that you’re going to be turned on—meaning that you know what you like—then really it’s not that hard.
TONY: After the SNL appearance, has it become difficult for even you to say your last name the right way? Peter Sarsgaard: You mean without a pirate accent? My name has always seemed very normal to me. And it’s not hard to say. It’s phonetic. Whereas Gyllenhaal, for example, it’s perfectly understandable that you wouldn’t come out with that.
TONY: Yeah, it’s sort of like, “Buy a vowel!” Peter Sarsgaard: I mean, there’s loads of consonants right in a row at the beginning—G-Y-L-L, still no vowel. The double a at the end is just to let you relax after going through all those consonants. TONY: You hooked up with Maggie just because she also has a double a in her last name, didn’t you? Peter Sarsgaard: [Laughs] Yeah. I don’t know. No. Source: www.timeout.com
Ask the Prince of Persia developers whatever you want:
"We're offering you the chance to ask whatever you want to the Prince of Persia development team. So if you have a burning question about Elika's role in the game, want to know more about the Corruption or just want to know what it's like to work at Ubisoft in Montreal, get over to the following Youtube page to find out more":
"It was an Oscar-winning film lauded for its sensitive portrayal of two lovelorn cowboys and their illicit passion in America's homophobic Midwest. But despite the success of Brokeback Mountain, starring the late Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, the author on whose story it was based has complained that the tale has become "the source of constant irritation in my private life".Annie Proulx, 73, the Pulitzer prize-winning author whose short story was made into the Hollywood film in 2005, said she had been pestered ever since by "pornish" mail sent by fans offering their interpretations of the story.
When the story was published in 1999, it was praised for its delicate handling of homophobia in the ranching country of Wyoming. But her fans feel she could have gone further in her descriptions of the love shared by the two central characters.
She told The Wall Street Journal: "There are countless people out there who think the story is open range to explore their fantasies and to correct what they see as an unbearably disappointing story. They constantly send ghastly manuscripts and pornish rewrites of the story to me, expecting me to reply with praise and applause for 'fixing' the story. They certainly don't get the message that if you can't fix it, you've got to stand it.
"Brokeback Mountain has had little effect on my writing life, but is the source of constant irritation in my private life."The film, directed by Ang Lee, received critical acclaim and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning three".
"The first thing you notice about Michael Cera in person is that he seems a lot smaller and skinnier than he does in the movies. Maybe it’s actually true that the camera adds ten pounds. He’s also even nicer and seemingly more vulnerable than the characters he plays, if that were actually possible. His role as Nick in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist is nothing new for him, but because he’s so honest and innocent, it hasn’t gotten old. He’s like the Lloyd Dobbler for an entirely new generation.-I’m curious, because you guys are kind of in the target demo that movies like this and Superbad and Juno are aimed at. What do you think is different about these movies of the last couple of years, as opposed to back in the ’90s when we had a lot of teen movies that were maybe a little more gross-out based, a little more sexist perhaps. Do you like any of the movies that come out now?
-I like anything that feels authentic or comes from a real place. Comes from someone’s heart. I’ve never liked those gross out comedies. I watch a lot of movies and that’s not really what I watch or like. I just try and do things that I think I would like.-So you play guitar?
-Yeah, and a little piano.
-We keep hearing things about the Arrested Development movie, is it actually happening as far as you know?
-We’re not in production and I haven’t read a script. I know Jason (Bateman) wants to, and I don’t know if Mitch (Hurwitz) wants to. But, I would only want to be a part of it if it was going to be good. Because, its good to end on a high note, I think, and go out with a bang and leave the winning war. That’s just my instinct. I don’t think it would be worth doing unless it was going to live up to the expectation that might come with it.-Do you go home a lot?
-Yeah, I’m home right now in Toronto. Yeah, I’m going to be here a little while after the festival". Source: blog.spout.com
Joseph Gordon-Levitt at the World Premiere of "Uncertainty" with Lynn Collins. "There are other elements in Miracle at St. Anna that feel off to me, but I'm more than willing to accept how that may not be because of any failings on the part of Lee or McBride, but rather because I'm simply incapable of wrapping my mind around the brute enormity of war -- and racism -- in the 1940's from a remove of seven decades in time. Miller's Train is certainly from the same mold as Lenny in Of Mice and Men; I couldn't imagine a character so simple being able to serve, but, then again, I wasn't there. I could wrap my head around a scene set on the home front, where our four soldiers are denied counter service at a Southern ice cream parlor while German POW's sit out front, but not around the scene's denouement, which felt strained and stilted.But then Lee follows that with a shot of our four heroes -- not protagonists, but heroes -- looking right into the camera, weary and wounded and tired: This is what we're willing to do; what are you willing to do to earn that? It's a question all soldiers, and especially these soldiers, have the right to ask; it's a question very few film makers would be willing to ask of us on their behalf. Terence Blanchard's score is haunting; Matthew Libatique's cinematography captures frenzy and grace, brutal slaughter and exhilarating life. The four leads are superb, as well -- each turning potential boiler-plate war movie caricatures into something richer and deeper while still maintaining the movie-style shimmer of archetype and affect". Source: www.cinematical.com
"I know people want to know about me and Brad. But I don't want to go into the details of our marriage, because it's best not to. That's what helps keep it normal. Besides, there's enough false information out there to last you a lifetime. But seeing there's a theme here, I will say one thing. I'll tell you about Brad's laugh. I don't know how to explain it except it sounds like a twelve-year-old boy who just threw a water balloon down on somebody. Just the other night, he was watching the Robin Williams HBO special while I was sending out e-mails in another room, and out burst that great mischievous laugh. I just looked up and giggled.When I got the script to this movie, The Good Girl, I read it in an hour. The writer, Mike White, has an ability to create characters that are so creepy and dysfunctional and human, with this duality that makes people feel empathy for them at the same time. My first thought was: Was this sent to the right person? I called my agent. "Are they sure? Let's say yes before they realize they've sent it to the wrong person!"
On the first day of shooting, we started in the middle of the movie. Right at the center of my character's arc, where she's losing her mind and she's got to get rid of her illicit lover and she doesn't know what to do, but she's got to get rid of him, so she buys these blackberries. I don't want to give away too much. But I had to do this really tense scene with the blackberries on the very first day, and this fear welled up in me, and next thing I knew I'm asking Miguel Arteta, the director, if maybe we could move the location and start with another scene. I'll never forget what he said: "The way I look at it, you might as well jump chest first into the empty pool."You know what I'm hoping? One of these days there will be a moment when I can get up on that karaoke stage and sing. Let's face it, if I make a living making people laugh, why stop here?
Jake and his dad Stephen Gyllenhaal at ACLU Foundation Torch of Liberty Awards Dinner (2003).
LAND OF THE FREE
"Can't disney this away, can't prozac it back into the warm sofa of this once obedient chest. The grand chandelier that's turning like a satellite demanding utter allegiance and the closer attention that should have been paid to grammar, to the names and statistics of all the ballplayers has lost its grip on the color pink mistaking it for the space between the first and second amendments"
"I know what you’re thinking and yes I do work out. You may find this hard to believe but I was not always the mentally muscled pencil pusher you see flexing his mind before you. You see back in the day I was super super lightweight back-talking-elementary-school-teachers champion. With one raise of my scrawny arm I could hit Mrs. Ames with the colloquial plural of octopus list every Venezuelan Vice-President in reverse alphabetical order and correct a subject-verb disagreement in her original question our phones were ringing like a save the whales telethon back then. Inquiring teachers wanted to know how could such a skinny little kid be filled with so much hatred and contempt? Back talkers don’t win many blacktop boxing matches scrawny arms raised for throwing sand and exacting scratches. Because educated fourth-grade playground mercenaries know— creating pain is easier than creating Whiteboy’s narrower than Urkel! This imagination’s fertile but you can’t fit a square into a social circle Though stuffed into a locker one tends to get philosophical …blood, black and blue do make a pretty shade of purple. In seventh grade I scrawled Neanderthal across Takashi’s locker with a Sharpie after he lit my hair on fire to see what it would smell like— I left a couple blazing trails on the asphalt when he tore after me during lunch Coulda been friends but nerds with vendettas offend and God prefers burning a vandal on both ends; melted wax poetics Doing lines of Shakespeare in the bathroom with a library card and a twisty straw. That lightweight Hulk Hogan who can’t bench press the wheaties box his face is on I don’t think I need remind anyone of my famous last stand in middle school the post PE face-off in the hallway— Mr. Minshull and his whistle blocking the exit. My boombox was the only one that ever stuck by my side so I cranked the janky credo-blaster to 10 If you wanna go and get high wit’ me Smoke an L in the back of the BenZ Oh why must I feel this way? Started rhyming over the topof his head I can’t remember exactly what was said just that it was epic [...]"
"Undisputed Backtalk Champion", edited by bestselling author Adam Mansbach, sold out its two first printings on First Word Press. Excerpts from George Watsky Official Website: www.georgewatsky.com
"George Watsky performing his poem "Carry the One" at the opening plenary of Greenbuild Chicago 2007. George took the stage directly before President Bill Clinton gave the keynote address to a crowd of almost 7,000 in the main conference and overflow room". Still from 'George Watsky - Def Poetry 6 Full video'.
"On September 23rd, Fox Home Entertainment and MGM Home Entertainment will release two unforgettable thrillers PATHOLOGY and DECEPTION on DVD. PATHOLOGY: The creators of Crank crank up the shock value in this twisted tale of terror that combines pulse-pounding thrills with heart-stopping suspense! Ted Grey (Milo Ventimiglia) is a brilliant medical student with a promising future in forensics. But when he joins the nation’s most prestigious Pathology program, he unknowingly becomes a pawn in a terrifying game of death and destruction as his fellow students use their razor-sharp skills to commit unthinkable murders. When the pathological secrets of his colleagues begin to unfold, Ted quickly realizes that what he doesn’t know...could kill him. DECEPTION: Leave your inhibitions at the door as Hugh Jackman (X-Men Trilogy) and Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain) lure Ewan McGregor (Moulin Rouge) into a tangled web of lust and lies in this scorching erotic thriller. Lonely, timid accountant Jonathan McQuarry (McGregor) lives only for his work – until a chance meeting with suave, charismatic corporate lawyer Wyatt Bose (Jackman) introduces him to “The List.” Suddenly, the right cell-phone number and the words, “Are You Free Tonight” launch Jonathan on a decadent journey of sexual conquests and self-discovery amidst New York’s power elite. But an affair with a ravishing and mysterious stranger (Williams) will expose him to another world he never imagined: one of betrayal, treachery and murder". Source: groups.yahoo.com
"When I was drunk I wanted to get sober and when I was sober I wanted to get drunk,' John L. says; 'I lived that way for years, and I submit to you that's not livin, that's a fuckin death-in-life.’ — then unbelievable psychic pain, a kind of peritonitis of the soul, psychic agony, fear of impending insanity (why can't I quit if I so want to quit, unless I'm insane?), appearances at hospital detoxes and rehabs, domestic strife, financial free-fall, eventual domestic Losses — 'And then I lost my wife to drinking. I mean I still knew where she was and whatnot. I just went in one day and there was some other fellow doing it,' at which there's not all that much laughter, lots of pained nods: it's often the same all over, in terms of domestic Losses. — then vocational ultimatums, unemployability, financial ruin, pancreatitis, overwhelming guilt, bloody vomiting, cirrhotic neuralgia, incontinence, neuropathy, nephritis, black depressions, searing pain, with the Substance affording increasingly brief periods of relief; then, finally, no relief available anywhere at all; finally it's impossible to get high enough to freeze what you feel like, being this way; and now you hate the Substance, bate it, but you stiJl find yourself unable to stop doing it, the Substance, you find you finally want to stop more than anything on earth and it's no fun doing it anymore and you can't believe you ever liked doing it and but you still can't stop, it's like you're totally fucking bats, it's like there's two yous; and when you'd sell your own dear Mum to stop and still, you find, can't stop, then the last layer of jolly friendly mask comes off your old friend the Substance, it's midnight now and all masks come off, and you all of a sudden see the Substance as it really is, for the first time you see the Disease as it really is, really has been all this time, you look in the mirror at midnight and see what owns you, what's become what you are — 'A fuckin livin death, I tell you it's not being near alive, by the end I was undead, not alive, and I tell you the idea of dyin was nothing compared to the idea of livin like that for another five or ten years and only then dyin,' with audience heads nodding in rows like a wind-swept meadow; boy can they ever Identify. — and then you're in serious trouble, very serious trouble, and you know it, finally, deadly serious trouble, because this Substance you thought was your one true friend, that you gave up all for, gladly, that for so long gave you relief from the pain of the Losses your love of that relief caused, your mother and lover and god and compadre, has finally removed its smily-face mask to reveal centerless eyes and a ravening maw, and canines down to here, it's the Face In The Floor, the grinning root-white face of your worst nightmares, and the face is your own face in the mirror, now, it's you, the Substance has devoured or replaced and become you, and the puke-, drool-and Substance-crusted T-shirt you've both worn for weeks now gets torn off and you stand there looking and in the root-white chest where your heart (given away to It) should be beating, in its exposed chest's center and center-less eyes is just a lightless hole, more teeth, and a beckoning taloned hand dangling something irresistible, and now you see you've been had, screwed royal, stripped and fucked and tossed to the side like some stuffed toy to lie for all time in the posture you land in. You see now that It's your enemy and your worst personal nightmare and the trouble It's gotten you into is undeniable and you still can't stop. Doing the Substance now is like attending Black Mass but you still can't stop, even though the Substance no longer gets you high. You are, as they say, Finished. You cannot get drunk and you cannot get sober; you cannot get high and you cannot get straight. You are behind bars; you are in a cage and can see only bars in every direction. You are in the kind of a hell of a mess that either ends lives or turns them around. You are at a fork in the road that Boston AA calls your Bottom, though the term is misleading, because everybody here agrees it's more like someplace very high and unsupported: you're on the edge of something tall and leaning way out forward.... If you listen for the similarities, all these speakers' Substance-careers seem to terminate at the same cliff's edge. You are now Finished, as a Substance-user. It's the jumping-off place. You now have two choices. You can either eliminate your own map for keeps — blades are the best, or else pills, or there's always quietly sucking off the exhaust pipe of your re-possessable car in the bank-owned garage of your familyless home. Something whimpery instead of banging. Better clean and quiet and (since your whole career's been one long futile flight from pain) painless. Though of the alcoholics and drug addicts who compose over 70% of a given year's suicides, some try to go out with a last great garish Balaclavan gesture: one longtime member of the White Flag Group is a prognathous lady named Louise B. who tried to take a map-eliminating dive off the old Hancock Building downtown in B.S. '81 but got caught in the gust of a rising thermal only six flights off the roof and got blown cartwheeling back up and in through the smoked-glass window of an arbitrage firm's suite on the thirty-fourth floor, ending up sprawled prone on a high-gloss conference table with only lacerations and a compound of the collarbone and an experience of willed self-annihilation and external intervention that has left her rabidly Christian — rabidly, as in foam — so that she's comparatively ignored and avoided, though her AA story, being just like everybody else's but more spectacular, has become metro Boston AA myth. But so when you get to this jumping-off place at the Finish of your Substance-career you can either take up the Luger or blade and eliminate your own personal map — this can be at age sixty, or twenty-seven, or seventeen — or you can get out the very beginning of the Yellow Pages or InterNet Psych-Svce File and make a blubbering O2OOh. phone call and admit to a gentle grandparentish voice that you're in trouble, deadly serious trouble, and the voice will try to soothe you into hanging on until a couple hours go by and two pleasantly earnest, weirdly calm guys in conservative attire appear smiling at your door sometime before dawn and speak quietly to you for hours and leave you not remembering anything from what they said except the sense that they used to be eerily like you, just where you are, utterly fucked, and but now somehow aren't anymore, fucked like you, at least they didn't seem like they were, unless the whole thing's some incredibly involved scam, this AA thing, and so but anyway you sit there on what's left of your furniture in the lavender dawnlight and realize that by now you literally have no other choices besides trying this AA thing or else eliminating your map, so you spend the day killing every last bit of every Substance you've got in one last joyless bitter farewell binge and resolve, the next day, to go ahead and swallow your pride and maybe your common sense too and try these meetings of this 'Program' that at best is probably just Unitarian happy horseshit and at worst is a cover for some glazed and canny cult-type thing where they'll keep you sober by making you spend twenty hours a day selling cellophane cones of artificial flowers on the median strips of heavy-flow roads. And what defines this cliffish nexus of exactly two total choices, this miserable road-fork Boston AA calls your Bottom, is that at this point you feel like maybe selling flowers on median strips might not be so bad, not compared to what you've got going, personally, at this juncture. And this, at root, is what unites Boston AA: it turns out this same resigned, miserable, brainwash-and-exploit-me-if-that's-what-it-takes-type desperation has been the jumping-off place for just about every AA you meet, it emerges, once you've actually gotten it up to stop darting in and out of the big meetings and start walking up with your wet hand out and trying to actually personally meet some Boston AAs. As the one particular tough old guy or lady you're always particularly scared of and drawn to says, nobody ever Comes In because things were going really well and they just wanted to round out their p.m. social calendar. Everybody, but everybody Comes In dead-eyed and puke-white and with their face hanging down around their knees and with a well-thumbed firearm-and-ordnance mail-order catalogue kept safe and available at home, map-wise, for when this last desperate resort of hugs and cliches turns out to be just happy horseshit, for you. You are not unique, they'll say: this initial hopelessness unites every soul in this broad cold salad-bar'd hall. They are like Hindenburg-survivors. Every meeting is a reunion, once you've been in for a while".
"NNYC's harbor's Liberty Island's gigantic Lady has the sun for a crown and holds what looks like a huge photo album under one iron arm, and the other arm holds aloft a product. The product is changed each 1 Jan. by brave men with pitons and cranes. But it's funny what they'll find funny, AAs at Boston meetings, listening. The next Advanced Basics guy summoned by their gleamingly bald western-wear chairman to speak is dreadfully, transparently unfunny: painfully new but pretending to be at ease, to be an old hand, desperate to amuse and impress them. The guy's got the sort of professional background where he's used to trying to impress gatherings of persons. He's dying to be liked up there. He's performing. The White Flag crowd can see all this. Even the true morons among them see right through the guy. This is not a regular audience. A Boston AA is very sensitive to the presence of ego. When the new guy introduces himself and makes an ironic gesture and says, 'I'm told I've been given the Gift of Desperation. I'm looking for the exchange window,' it's so clearly unspontaneous, rehearsed—plus commits the subtle but cardinal Message-offense of appearing to deprecate the Program rather than the Self—that just a few polite titters resound, and people shift in their seats with a slight but signal discomfort. The worst punishment Gately's seen inflicted on a Commitment speaker is when the host crowd gets embarrassed for him. Speakers who are accustomed to figuring out what an audience wants to hear and then supplying it find out quickly that this particular audience does not want to be supplied with what someone else thinks it wants. It's another conundrum Gately finally ran out of cerebral steam on. Part of finally getting comfortable in Boston AA is just finally running out of steam in terms of trying to figure stuff like this out. Because it literally makes no sense. Close to two hundred people all punishing somebody by getting embarrassed for him, killing him by empathetically dying right there with him, for him, up there at the podium. The applause when this guy's done has the relieved feel of a fist unclenching, and their cries of 'Keep Coming!' are so sincere it's almost painful".
"The word that best connoted why the glass's mouth looked slotty was probably foreshortened. The Q.R.S. Infantilist would no doubt join the old grief-therapist in asking how watching one's Moms begin to age makes you feel inside. Questions like these become almost koans: you have to lie when the truth is Nothing At All, since this appears as a textbook lie under the therapeutic model. The brutal questions are the ones that force you to lie". "Infinite Jest" is a more an experience from an exceptional observer of the chaos of our Western world than a mere book. I'm reading now, I've bought it in internet although I guess Foster Wallace wasn't too fond of shopping online. I can say DFW is on my list of guys I'll miss and whom I'll cry for. He nailed in his stories many of insecurities and fears who threat to struggle our minds, I've been living good part of my adult life battling one or another type of depression and I know the only way to stay sane is trying to ignore this collective depression that media and other modern inventions insist on injecting us daily.
Foster reminds me a bit of Henry Miller (without the sex exaltation): "Long ago, when I was making merry writing "Black Spring" I was already revealing in the fact that the world about me was going to pieces. From the times that I was old enough to think, I had a hunch that this was so. Then I came up Oswald Spengler. He confirmed my inner convinctions." -Henry Miller ("The Angel is my watermark").
I know some local poets/writers from my town who ask me if it's not a contradiction blogging about Hollywood stars and participate of this big conglomerate of artificiality or superficiality. Well, sometimes I wonder what the fuck I'm doing? What sense does my blog have for me? These are the difficult questions (that force you not to lie). When I started my blog, I was recovering of an illness, and I found Jake (his expressivity, his smile, his movies) that made me want to share my sensations with possible readers, maybe some of them lonely like me. Of course my main reason to log in Weirdland is that I love cinema above majority of things in my life. I find refuge in movies as many geeks and I'm proud of my collection. And David Foster would understand it, as we need an obsession, as all of us need something.
I don't mind being an anonymous blogger, most of time is grey, boring, tedium, sometimes blogging feels like taking a shower without water, there is only a spark between my typing and a new post, another picture upload, another wrong link, etc. but I'm proud of it, I'm proud of Jake Weird, despite of its relative insignificance, it has allowed me to contact ephemerally with some people I admire or just people.
There were rough times, as the first time my videos were deleted from Youtube and I hadn't made any security copy (what a dumbass, you must think!), well I was crying like a baby, I couldn't take a breakfast, I was strolling in a park near my house and when I went back home, I found a message from Rian Johnson sending me very kind words, and how much they helped me to keep on.
Also it's cool to know that, among others, Illeana Douglas, Diablo Cody, Greg Mottola or Aviva (Superbad) appreciate the hard work from making fan-videos dedicated to them. Or how much some replies from some actors or writers mean to me. But what really makes me keep on, uploading, typing, net searching, browsing, saving, video converting, video embedding, editing, etc. is that spark, that connection with an anonymous world that I don't know, but which I feel I love it every time I press that key, and I want to come to know it.
And that spark is Jake Gyllenhaal, is Kirsten Dunst, is Weirdland, is my latest girl-crush, is a next release, is an upcoming film, is a new photoshoot, is a random quote, is David Foster Wallace.
"Closet chef Jake Gyllenhaal is developing a new organic restaurant venture with top cook Chris Fischer.
"So, Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali (of restaurant and Food Network fame), and a Spanish movie star and cook book author Mark Bittman are teaming up to host a documentary-style show in which they travel through Spain eating food. It is random, very random. Gwyneth apparently speaks fluent spanish, Mario and her have amazing chemistry and it all begins and ends with WILLIE NELSON singing. There is no voice over that soothes me saying “yeah, this is really strange and incredible and quite the paella of people and places but it is going to be awesome!”
