i don’t want to get out of bed
and face the cold, foreboding wild
of this sunny spring day.
a walk to a pleasant lake
is just two blocks away
but i need to be sure i look ok.
to be down is to be alone
with nowhere to go but home.
so i waste away behind barred blinds,
my head buried in sand.
i check my email frequently
to see if i still exist,
if only in a broadband.
//wd 2.16.2026
Original photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com.
I don’t usually gush (I’ve consigned two 5-star ratings in two years with the system), but I’m a Jason Statham fan.
Regardless of the actual quality of the movies themselves he’s headlined, Statham himself is effortlessly appealing & ‘unfuckable with’. I wouldn’t want him to kick me full-force in the breastbone.
Curious, then, that Statham’s “Shelter” character Mason spends most of the first act drunk, with his feet up by the fire. Yes, Mason is supposed to be a self-exiled recluse, but it’s rare to see Statham – at this stage in his career – chillaxin’ on-screen without exterior pressure.
[cont’d]
‘Pacing’ is certainly a thing: attributed to no one, it’s an essential part of any entertainment. Audiences won’t notice the spacetime something occupies in their lives unless they’re bored, or they totally disagree with what they’re experiencing.
As an example, halfway through Michael Haneke’s 1997 art-horror “Funny Games”, there’s a long, unbroken take assumed as decompression for its characters. That part is so slow that the first time I watched, I fast-forwarded through it.
But skipping “FG’s” depiction of grief also meant reinforcing its themes of desensitization. Once it clicked, it’s a rare movie scene where something simple blossoms within a spacial indiscipline.
On the other hand, skipping scenes in Johannes Roberts’ “Primate” won’t reveal the dark side of its audience, but it will get you to the credits faster.
[cont’d]
the poor
the needy
the starving children in
your city
do not want your
shrunken, crusty,
38-day past due remains
of sugar-free cotton candy
Sobeys,
unopened in transparent packaging
at the bottom of a dirty onion bin called
a hamper
looking like unsold Funkos of the villain from
Liv Tyler’s Armageddon:
an impulse Christmas gift if ever you’ve seen –
“but it’s better than drinking your own pee!”
putting to question how the homeless population,
lacking proper hydration,
gained access to Waterworld levels of hydro-filtration without
Federal intervention
when my working wife won’t even gift me
a Japanese home man-milking contraption.
no Sir.
this is why the Food Bank demands cash.
so do middle-schoolers whose lunch is a Quarter-Pounder.
maybe we should be more concerned with
the elderly percentile.
//wd 1.22.2026
Original photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com.
Filmmaker & author S. Craig Zahler’s “Brawl in Cell Block 99” is a prison-fighting thriller, with an audacious literary-esque understatement. I’ll demonstrate using Lindsay Lohan…
In 2013, at her then-nadir, Lohan & disgraced porn performer James Deen headlined Paul Schrader’s social drama “The Canyons”. Schrader is the legendary screenwriter of Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver” – but a type-A director, exemplified by Stephen Rodrick’s New York Times article on Canyons’ production.
One provocative point in Rodrick’s piece was distributors’ worries over Canyons’ slow, unmarketable first act. Directorial colleague & editing precisionist Steven Soderbergh offered to cut an alternate version himself, to what Schrader responded, “You know what [he’d] do if another director offered to cut his film?” And flipped the bird. “That’s what Soderbergh would do.”
[cont’d]
theory of a daskeman 