Russel and Flo

Have you ever seen Leaving Las Vegas? What did you think of it? Why?

At one point in my life, I got into these *gritty* reality movies. I read alot of Charles Bukowski and I actually liked seeing the s**t of life. I liked it I suppose because that's how I felt inside. All f'ed up.

Which is what Hustle and Flow showed. Things all f'ed up. I am not qualified to write a review of this flick. I turned it off after the main character (a pimp) went out with his ho to a thing, smoked a little somethin somethin, drank a little somethin else, then came home to another
fee-male he was takin care of (not technically a ho, but a naked dancer in the burliest sense of the word) who mouthed off and he kicked her out of the stanky hovel they lived in. Babies crying, pregnant lady in the background... you could almost smell the dirty sheets and stank from the kuchen.

This is where we turned it off.

I might have turned it off when he was pimpin out this young girl who didn't really seem to want to, or I might have turned it off at the naked bar scene...but we kept watching, hoping for some redemption. It almost came at a point where the main pimp and the pregnant lady talked about how messed up their lives were. The pregnant lady dreamt she gave birth to dead dogs, she suckled dead animals of different varieties. And a child being born into what they lived, well, I can see why she might dream that.

I can't watch this stuff anymore. I used to think people like me were either uber prissies or thought they were all righteous. I don't think I am righteous. Can I be an uber prissy having done the stuff I done?

I don't need all my cinema to be escapism to happy land or whatever. But I can't waste time on what I know exists, down in the gutters, where people do things I now do not understand. I used to like to plumb the depths. I used to want to go everywhere and see everything and try it all at least just once. So I did. Now, I know it's there, I know there is no future in those places, and it pains me to watch folk seem to make decisions that keep them there. And the most bothersome are the children, who can't hope to be normal, or hope to not make the same decisions that lock them in these places, cos that's all they've ever known: human misery.

It's just a movie, we watched One Day in September before this, detailing what happened in Munich when all the Israeli athletes were shot, I don't need escapism, but I don't need to watch a man drink himself to death or a pimp and his ho's in their dire straits either.

Maybe I didn't give it a chance, maybe DJay will make a platinum album, maybe his ho's will wear fine furs, get some skills and get a job that they like and be happy. Maybe they'll take up an art, maybe they will get a nice house and plant a garden or help other people in the same situation as they were in. Maybe they'll take parenting classes and learn that cocaine use is not such a hot idear. Maybe monkeys will fly out my rear.

I dare not speculate how the success as a rapper might change our DJay, but I am reminded of how lottery winners are after their windfall.