got to check out V for Vendetta last Sunday and left with my soul quenched. a huge comic head, i have been very pleased with hollywood’s embrace of the genre. Batman Returns, X-Men 1 & 2, Spider-Man 1 & 2, , Sin City and Hellboy stand out as stellar films all on their own merit but the fact that they have succesfully survived the board room of the big studios makes the final product even that better.

on the downside- Fantastic Four was all special effects and no character development. Daredevil brought together a high powered cast, great effects and then bastarized the story. speaking of which, Elektra didnt help matters with bypassing all the great stuff of the worlds deadliest hit-woman and going with all the mystical elements. (the box office reflected this and when you add the low money returns on Catwoman, Aeon Flux and Ultraviolet, Wonder Woman will either save all future comic heroine films or relegate them to development hell.)

nuff of dat, the grapich novel V for Vendetta, written by cult hero Alan Moore and drawn by David Lloyd, documents the terrorist activities of V, a mysterious figure living in the fascist England that resulted from the victory of the axis powers in world war 2. played out over 10 issues, V the comic suffers from a serious shift due to the fact that Moore took a break from the writing but other than that serves as a wonderful example of substance over style. Lloyd’s almost water color renditions add to the surrealism of this world that could very easily be our own and Moore is the master at comic pacing transforming this blow-em-up into a multi layered “who is that masked man?,” police mystery thriller, classic revenge tale, coming of age epic and bold political/mythology statement. in short, you should buy the book.

the movie sticks close but not too close to the source material as it shifts the spotlight to Evie, the innocent bystander who gets drawn into V’s quest for revenge. Natalie Portman hits all the right moves and emerges as a heroine with the grace & tempered strength that her Star Wars character should have had but was denied thanks to weak writing. Hugo Weaving rocks as the masked V, its all voice and body movement here folks and it works great especially in the halls of cinema.

on the production front– kudos to first time director James McTeigue (a pretty high water mark you’ve set there, pal) but the big names on the marqee are Matrix mavens the Wachowski Brothers. this here film just got them there get.out.of.jail.free card for the weak Matrix 2 and disappointing Matrix 3. suffice to say V is not the Matrix 4 and the brothers keep the bullet time antics to a bare minimum.

the bottom line– if you are looking for a fun time at the movies with a lot of explosions, political intrigue, fine writing and a chance to cheer for a terrorist in post 9/11 america: V is for you. it gets a cigar up from che!

i will be resigning from my job today.

back to you en el studio…

UPDATED NEWS!
the die is cast and the deed is done

our oaktown correspondent reports a minor earthquake occurred at the moment the news became official

coincidence?

we think not.

more updates as they occur.

we know return you to El Show de Walter Mercado…

And another page turns as I signed off of the synonymUS list serve today with a nice simple note—

fun times last night y’all, werd

consider this my last post on this list serve as i continue on my
exodus.

if you need me, i aint hard to find and always ready to lend a hand.

its been real and its been fun but mostly its been real fun…

palabra,
ob

This isn’t as dramatic a split as Acentos with Raymond Daniel in the Captain’s seat, a position that he has occupied for quite a bit of time. Add Rich, Abena, Scot, Steph, Jessica Elizabeth & the other musicians/artists that join in on the jams and the team is rock solid.

But this was the first series I actually had a hand in. Lynne is the original founder and she put a call for others to come and help organize a collaborative poetry reading. At the time Ray and I were working on “Mercy on the Battlefield” and just plain bugging out on our own- what would come to be known as synonymUS Jams. Based on this one collab I figured that I could help a bit and intro Lynne & Ray. Pretty soon I was in the thick of organizing and loving it, mostly because I was still unsure if I even had the stuff to be a poet but always knew that I could cut it as an organizer.

Confession- All my previous forays into the administration aspect of poetry readings have been based on insecurities in my own work. Five years later I feel damn confident in my writing and, consequently, I really have no plans to regularly curate or host when I move to the West Coast. (Its gonna be fun to read this later on down the road. I know it!) Confessional- Done.

There were other insecurities as well especially when I would look around the roundtable of synonymUS founders – Lynne Procope, Raymond Daniel Medina, Sabrina Hayeem-Ladani & Elana Bell – and see a wealth of poetic experience and then me with all of six months of writing experience but it didn’t take long before I was booking poets on my own and learning the promotion game.

The first couple of shows were strong but then we hit the end of the year. When we came back in 2003 we lost a ton of audience and never recovered. The fact that we were running a workshop after the collaborations did not help the flow of the show either. The true bomb was that we were running the series out of the Bowery Poetry Club and had to promise the club a minimum paid attendance. Soon I was more worried about making that number than anything else and the joy of poetry was being replaced by the angst of business. In the end, we couldn’t produce the numbers and were left without a venue.

Luckily, Ray kept the Jams going and soon we were rocking out in a recording studio in the West Side. It was cramped, it was hot, it was loud and it was not free but the series, in the most grassroots manner possible, was still alive.

Later on the Nuyorican offered Fish a slot on their schedule and he passed it on to Ray. We were back in business and have been making it happen ever since.

The attendance is nowhere near capacity and the organizers have to bust their ass to make sure word gets out but throughout all this synonymUS has managed to birth a slew of poetic collaborations and is the go to crew whenever louderARTS even thinks about jumping into multi-disciplinary work which is one area where we could have made more headway. The poets should be developing an ear for what works and doesn’t work musically with their work and feel free to approach other artists for collaborations as opposed to lazily returning to synonymUS every time they want to jazz up their work.

Even though I was late (what else is new) I still got to see Ron’s set and hang out hard and heavy with the peeps afterwards. Warm mango cobbler + coconut sherbert = Happy OB. I definitely plan on being at the next show featuring Kelly Tsai and who knows, I may even get there in time to kick a piece on the Open Form@ (the collaborative open mic)!

For now, I feel good having made a new turn on the road. Not so much saying ‘Goodbye’ to the series that helped birth me but just kinda sayin ‘Good Night’

* From Ray’s poem “Bronx Born Straphangar”