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:Looking for Cosmic Gods Inside of Trinket Shops: (Update Later to Edited Version.)

 

                                        :Looking for Cosmic Gods Inside of Trinket Shops:

                                        By

                             Daniel Louis Krone 

                  “Uncertainty, like opening your eyes wide in the dark then closing them hard then open and blinded by the sparkling silver dots created from pressure on the cornea, squint, roll, focus, then your blind again but at least you saw light somehow.” - Kurt Cobain. 

                                                        The Shower Thoughts of a Djinn

 

                      Would you wish upon a star or perhaps a Djinn, would you beg a Genie for help, or your god, as your world comes crashing in? 

                    Could you commit hari-kari with the Sword of Damocles . . . while down on your knees, begging please? 

                    Would you like to meet a god even if you knew doing so would drive you insane? 

                    Or have a quiet picket fence in the suburbs that slowly picks at your brain?  

                   Would you slit your wrist with Occam's or perhaps Hanlon's razor?  

                   Isn’t it life though you’d rather savor? 

                   Would you shake the devil’s hand even if his hand felt cold? 

                   Could you warm that hand up if you were so bold? 

                   And tell me strange little human…

How do you feel about growing old? 

….

Stars are merely the catchlight in the eyes of great cosmic gods.

Dev was looking for a god, it was the only thing that kept him going. 

Dev stared out at the sparkling desert and blew the ashes of his cigarette into the wind, remembering so many dandelion petals he’d blown in the past making wishes that had never once come true. 

This time though he was determined to finish his task. 

Dev sat far away from the nearest civilization cradling a small brass lamp in his hands as though it were a newborn. A few tears dripped out of Dev’s head onto the small brass lamp currently leaking oil. Perhaps they were a few tears of it’s own. 

The lamp just stat their as he rubbed it. He felt like an idiot rubbing such a benign and placid thing. 

Then suddenly small tufts of smoke almost invisible like steam began to pour out of the lamp until the smoke began to flood surrounding Dev. A monsoon of fog enveloped the entirety of the landscape around Dev so much that he could barely see the lamp in front of him. Then the lamp itself faded into the fog and two large golden glowing eyes floated just above Dev and where the lamp was. A voice as large as lightning bellowed through it causing giant wakes in the fog that opened up to the visage of a great floating man dressed in platinum, opal, and silver. The face looked the shape of an elk or that of a giant goat or both.  

                     Dev was frozen not in fear but strangely enough aghast in a strange climaxing of his ego.

                     The Djjinn sat upright, legs crossed and arms crossed looking like a worn out fisherman’s knot with horns. As he stood upright his old bones began to crack and each crack erupted like a thunder strike.  

Dev thought, 

                    ‘He’d done it’. 

                    ‘He’d done it’! 

                    And just as the Djjinn stood up a sound deflated Dev. 

                    It was a laugh…

                    …a laugh like Dev had never heard before. 

The laugh was very clearly mocking him but the robust voice of a man beyond age, no not of a man, an animal that learned to talk. The voice laughed a hearty laugh that shook Dev down to the bottom of his soul in a way he’d never felt in the entirety of his life. A life that to the Djjinn was no longer than the subtle blink of a hummingbird’s eye. 

                    Dev’s awe deflated as quickly as his heart dropped. The Djjinn was not this thing to be mocked. Dev realized suddenly like he never realized anything in his life: in all the splendor of his chase he never thought he’d actually find it.  

                    Dev’s sudden realization that deep down he never really believed he’d of found a Djjinn seized his body and mind full force that outside of focusing on his breathing he could simply focus on the Djjinn’s titanic laughter.

                    Dev had dedicated the entire latter half of his life to this one moment and it was laughing at him. 

                   Before Dev could even speak, the Djjinn did the very last thing he expected. Out of thin air appeared a cigarette, the size of a tree trunk, and a flame erupted from his fingertips, the size of a bonfire, to light it. He took a drag and the lukewarm ashes fell atop Dev. A shower of disinterest. 

                      A yawn slid out of the Djjinn before Dev spoke “….Not what I’d expected, ha” and like a kite in a squall Dev’s tone fluttered about as he spoke. His head dropped. 

“Dev Burman. 35. Indian American Born in Frankfort, Kentucky. Moved to

Rajasthan 3 years ago, B-Positive, favorite color Orange, favorite flower White Tulip, odd. Now that I’m here...what do you want? A Million Tulips? I’ve been asked stranger I assure.”

“Want…sir?”

The Djjinn spoke firmer, “Wishes sir. What everyman wants, fulfillment…anything. Are you a glutinous man, vengeful man, lonely man…a modest pervert?” 

Dev thought… “I don’t know what I really want right now sir, now that you’re actually here.” 

“Well you’ve got 2 more after. The first wish is usually a testing wish anyway. Throw it away. Use it on yourself. You could experience all the pleasures in the world…and for your second wish you could beg me to take it away?” 

Dev’s stomach rumbled sharply and, as if from a memory coiled up to save his tongue from drying out, he belted “A sandwich, um the best Rubin sandwich I’ve ever had.” 

Djjinn… “Ahahahahahahahah…one for the books. Game on. It’s been such a long time since I was asked for something so simple so early on. As you wish it sir.” 

‘Game on’…Dev thought, ‘This was a game?…How do I win?’

The fog around them evaporated as if cut by the midday sun. They were no longer deep in the desert but a large parking lot with a sign in front of them reading “Hal’s Delicatessen, Butcher, and Grocery Store”. 

“Whaaat”, Dev was awestruck by this appearance and yet with all the power it took to create this awe of a moment it faded into novelty as Dev was standing in front of a Deli like so many times before to anyone else a regular daily routine experience. 

The Djjinn gleefully grabbed a shopping cart and went down isle by isle throwing all the ingredients of a quality Rubin into the cart and checked out like a common customer. No one in the store seemed to make note of his strange appearance. When they were done checking out the Djjinn snapped is fingers and the world around them rearranged itself, squishing and resizing, things disappearing, changing colors, and fading in and out into the vague shape of a kitchen. Then it all snapped into clarity. “Ah, pocket dimensions…I’ve not been to that store in ages”. 

Dev stood locked into position fixated on the Djjinn now convinced this must be either dream, mirage, or the death rolls of a man’s rattled mind after freezing in the desert…but later he realized it was neither. It was a new inexplicable reality. 

“Please have a seat.” The Djinn spoke and pointed to a stool behind him. Dev sat. His entire figure moved on what seemed muscle memory alone as this whole experience had rattled him. The Djjinn then toasted the bread and meticulously began arranging the sandwich. He moved like he’d done this 1’000’s before. He served it to Dev on a white styrofoam plate. 

Dev took a bite…his face changed expressions deeply. He then scarfed the sandwich down in 4 long sloppy dripping large bites, gulped, and burped loudly as he swallowed the last of it. 

“To your satisfaction” The Djjinn said with a smile as beautiful as it was insidious. 

Dev began to cry again as a solid wave of realization swung through him. He had the power of gods in his hands. 

“Are there any rules?” Dev spoke in a demure fashion. 

The Djjinn’s eye coiled upwards in a thick spiral before he spoke. “No! There are no rules. Rewrite history for all I care. I am beyond your realm. I can shape everything around you.” 

“Well what’s the meaning of life?” A question Dev always pondered he’d ask God. Since the Djjinn seemed the closest thing he’d ever met to a god he thought he might as well ask now. 

“Oh, another easy one. Maybe I should make you my pet when this is all done. I like making sandwiches and answering easy childish questions.” A small ticklish animalistic cackle escaped the Djjinn. “Life is what you make of it. Everything in this world has its own shape, structure, and a unique set of rules around it. They all make the best they can of it no matter how twisted and strange of shapes they are. Where it came from, who designed it, now those are different questions…want to waste your third wish on the blue-prints of the universe? Do you even know how to read them?” 

“That’s it!” Dev screamed up at the Djjinn. The Djjin then retorted quickly, “That’s all I thought I’d elaborate on so you don’t have any stupid human follow up questions.” 

“Human…you grant wishes to animals?” 

“Why yes!” The Djjinn smiled. “I once turned a stag into King Solomon.” 

“Don’t think about asking me qualifying questions until you think you’ve figured out how this works. The last man who tried this died before his final wish. I believe his last words were ‘I wish…’, poor thing, never never finished the sentence.” He paused, “Want to know what he was going to say?” 

“Meditate on it.” The Djjinn smiled and then closed his eyes, crossed his legs, and began to float gently above Dev. Sand began to slide around them. The kitchen had dissolved back into the desert. 

Dev began to do what he’d always done when he got nervous or restless. Dev began to pace back and forth and the tempest in his mind of possibilities became a squall that almost over took him until he finally settled the storm in his mind and landed on one thought. 

“I know what I want!” 

The Djjinn opened his eyes and they began to glow and flicker like there were storms fighting within his large pupils.  

“What is it?”

“I want it all, not some rich simulacrum of all but I want to experience it all, every laughter, every breath…I want to experience it allllll!”

“Ha. And so you shall.” The Djjinn lifted his finger slowly to a snap. Dev’s fear of the unknown began to quake his body and he began to dry heave bits of sand that had previously flecked his lips. The Djinn snapped. 

SNAP!

And so it happened, suddenly Dev was experiencing everything. 

Every baby’s first laugh, the roar of 10’000 orgasms, the pain of being eaten alive by fire ants, the thrill of being a cloud on the first warm day of spring…everything….then lightning struck Dev’s scrambling shape and suddenly he felt the awe of being reborn, a spark that grows to ember that grows to a fire, screams, then withers to ash.” 

The Djjinn took out another long cigarette and smothered the Dev shaped ash mound below. He then recoiled into the lamp after he took the final drag of his cigarette. 

Soon after a large sandstorm blew for 3 days strait screaming across the desert in large whips of hot and cold. It took the lamp off into another world carrying a twisted smile leering behind a nondescript brass lamp. 

The surrounding locals said the wind sounded like laughter. 

GWAR: MY WEIRD HISTORY.

 

"I think they're like H.R. Giger crossed with that old Mexican boy band Menudo (because of their constantly-changing lineup), mixed with a little bit of The Blue Man Group on crack." - Juxtapoz. 

My Experience with GWAR

By 

Daniel Louis Krone

It was New Years 2021 when I fully realized the world had lost one of the greatest masked musicians, M.F. Doom. 

I had just woke up with my girlfriend and was ritualistically burning a Juxtapoz Magazine from 2015 whose article by Nancy Strange was about the Rock and Roll Lords of Chaos themselves, GWAR, listening to a TYCHO New Years live~stream, I remembered I needed to write an essay about those strange Rock and Roll monsters and my experience with them. Times had changed but my commitment to David Brockie’s legacy remained. 

I have a strange relationship with music and art. 

If I were to write down all I was thinking on this matter it would sound like the pedantic ravings of a madman still trying to shake off the last drips of the year 2020 and other things out of his system. 

Over the years I’ve been trying to correlate and quantify my experiences, feelings, thoughts, and emotions on my experience with the band GWAR. My history in the entertainment industry is less like an artist, or craftsman, but more like a journeyman. I have an Academy Award winning film (“Get Out”) and an Emmy winning T.V. show (“The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”) on my resume. Currently I work a retail job for the Government in Alabama. 

This journey has been very strange. I’d told myself at the age of 30 I’d want to direct a film I was proud of…I did. I told myself in 2020 I wanted to finish that film…I did. 

The GWAR project started out around 2010 when the idea of doing a documentary series on cult films, books, T.V.  shows, and music began to take seed. I’d previously directed a short documentary film titled “A Cult Influence” about the nature of cult media and fan bases of very particular and peculiar tastes. It was received moderately well.  

After the short film was featured on Slashfilm.com and a Full Moon sequel feature “Killer Eye: Halloween Haunt” I’d toyed with the idea of turning it into a T.V. series pitch. Each episode of the show would feature a new cult aspect of media. It  would showcase everything from modern Quake tournaments to The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s domination of Midnight Cinema from September 25, 1975 to present day. The T.V. show was pitched around to various producers but some egos, logistic complications, and general life seemed to snuff out that large scale idea almost completely. 

About a year after those failed pitches I’d moved into a house on Carpenter Ave. in the valley with several wild, young, party-crazy, up and coming industry movers and shakers. After sitting on the idea and working on a horror script with a friend back in Alabama I’d still toyed with pitches and unique ideas for this project. The ideas all felt dead. Once you start to study a subculture sometimes you get embedded in them and you then go down the rabbit hole to as many others you can find. Art is a language and I wanted to be well versed in as many strange dialects as I could but later realized I may have just been learning to speak in tongues. 

It wasn’t until seeing the anthology documentary film “Freakonomics”, based on the book of the same name, a different idea clicked. Since the balkanization of media into all these subgroups that already seemed to tackle the original thesis of the cults of the world I’d decided maybe a format change was best. Since you could type any cult subject into Youtube and for the most part find a decently crafted web-video on the subject I’d decided to boil it down into a feature film documentary pitch. It would be an anthology like “Freakonomics”, but each section dedicated to a particular cult of media; movies, books, video games and…bands. 

When I’d mentioned this to my friend Eliza she’d said “Oh, bands. You ever heard of GWAR? I’m friends with Dave Brockie.” And a lightbulb shotgunned in my head. 

The details of the GWAR shoot are best seen in the documentary. There are no interesting behind the scenes anecdotes. The only thing I do remember from the shoot is we listened to Tom Wait’s “Raindogs” on the ride up there and passed a strawberry field. The shoot despite a few glitches, false-starts, missed set-ups, out of focus shots, and rushes went fairly smooth it seemed. Dave was a gentleman. 

When I’d got the news of Dave’s death the energy in his interview seemed more and more apparent of how precious he was over the other subjects in my documentary. I had been editing the project with my friend Kayla in the valley for some time after I’d moved out of that old Carpenter house and as we cut and chopped I realized more and more my interviews with men like Clint Carney (Artist, Musician, and Prop-Wizard), Nicolas Caesar (Artist), Bill Shafer (Hyena Art Gallery owner featured in my previous film), Mike Van Eaton (Art Gallery owner specializing in Animation Cels), the owners of Mystery Pier Books, and Marc Sheffler (The man who famously blew his brains out in Wes Cravens classic cult film “The Last House on the Left”) all had their own individual merits but didn’t gel in the same way as Dave’s interview did. Over time I ejected all the other aspects of the film and concentrated my energy on GWAR.

In 2016 I left LA after spending 9 1/2 years there. I spent a period of 4 days in a hospital unable to go home. Somehow Radiohead had triggered a hibernating psychotic episode to wake. (It’s a long story and a very different essay.) 

I have a strange relationship with the language of music. 

This project went on after I moved back home. When I went home to reconnect with my roots it helped me reconnect with some old friends, and even an old friend whom I’d worked with in news before I’d left for LA, at the infamous WPMI, home of the Mobile Leperchaun story. After a quick few days on Netflix’s “Gerald’s Game” to “Get Out” then into a commercial for the state of Alabama, which never aired, I’d worked on another film as part of a behind the scenes crew and around then it clicked that I needed real work after the tax incentives had slowed for media and it was apparent it wasn’t enough to keep me afloat. I’d dive in and out of the project with various editors met in coffee houses many miles away. A few odd jobs at liquor stores, gas stations, and Surf Shops I still tried on my off days to work on various shows and even tried to coordinate funding for a film in New York while simultaneously cleaning horrifying toilets at a gas station on the Florida - Alabama line and trying to piece my memories back together from what happened in L.A.. 

Soon after one of my media friends died of a heart disease and I knew the work he’d done would never be seen and my passion for the entertainment world wilted. 

At one point during a serious re-edit of the material half of the GWAR footage went missing. It felt like part of this project was cursed. But I still wanted to finish it. I felt like I’d needed to. 

Sometimes you ask god for a desert and he presents you with a grain of sand and you’ll look back on that grain and be proud of your tiny contribution to a strange legacy of art. To finish this project in 2020 which started in 2014 and still having the long uphill battle of trying to get it out there feels like some kind of closure rests in that it feels finished. 

For a 14 minute short it sure feels like it was born in and out of chaos. 

Like leaving a GWAR show I feel messy and probably stained after finishing this project. 

Oh well, that’s life!

A Few Years Older Photo of Me For No Apparent Reason:

 

THE TRUMP CARD: A Relic From 4 Years Ago.

(This is an article I wrote during the first Trump campaign for a contest. It may not reflect my current views on the matter. It is here to be preserved. I did not win the contest.) 

The Trump Card 

By 

Daniel Louis Krone 

    

    If Hilary Clinton played the woman card in the Presidential Election of 2016 then it would be safe to say Donald John Trump, now the 45th President of the United States, played the Trump card. If you’ve ever played cards you know it is the card of which if you hold in your hand wins against all other cards. And that goes to the very deepest core of why I think Donald Trump won the 2016 election to become Commander and Chief. These deconstructions are going to start pouring out from experts and so-called experts across all sides and boundaries. I’m sure their is some remote aboriginal tribe that has an opinion on the 2016 Presidential election and there is probably a meme to go with it. 

    I feel almost everyone during this election was prone to drastic hyperbole and the passing along of deceptively toxic rhetoric, misleading information, and unfounded ideas. A headline from the BBC recently read “Facebook’s Fake News Crisis Deepens”. The great meme wars and internet talking head debates have started. Twitter is more used for news now than real genuine investigative journalism. That is a deeply troubling dynamic. Facts are currently weighed equally with opinions in the realms of news more often than in days past. Sensationalism is currently running amok and it is deeply distracting to reality. The ease of which it is to take quotes and videos out of context and repurpose them has reached critical levels. The 4-minute warning has sounded but not for the atomic bomb but for the every growing cultural schizophrenia of the information age. The world wide web has truly become a spiderweb of deep insanity and the level of cognitive dissonance was resoundingly loud this election cycle on both sides of the isle. The head of Breitbart News (Steve Bannon), a notoriously racist and right wing news organization, has become Trump’s chief media strategist and was recently given a place on the National Security Council. This is more proof that the corrosive web of what’s the truth and what’s misinformation on the internet will only become a more normalized trap and the levels of deep insanity will become far more common. The world wide web is indeed a web and people’s minds are being cocooned to later be feasted upon by the spiders like Steve Bannon and men like Alex Jones. The most frightening part of this dynamic is that those being feasted upon do not seem to care. They are blissful and at peace with their resounding ignorance. 

     

    I do believe most Americans fall somewhere in the middle of the whole right-left dichotomy. It would just depend on how the issues are broken down and that it seems is the crux of the failure of our media and by extension our politicians who have been met with low approval ratings after low approval ratings after low approval ratings pretending to be more concerned with the common man and then selling him out for corporate interests year after year. With words like liberal and conservative being tossed around currently as buzzwords and punchlines as apposed to a clear understanding of the points of view of the other and a discussion as to what legitimately will make things better. The divide between real world understanding is partially because of the internet’s deep divide of information. If you find an article with an expert laying out the foundation of evolution within a few clicks I can find a counter argument from a so-called expert laying out so-called information for the exact opposite of it. I can do this almost consistently with almost any argument. Even the simplest of understandings now fall subject to counter arguments being weighed and viewed in the same light and with something as deeply complicated as modern politics it’s almost impossible to find clear and concise information that shows a story honestly and in a responsible light. 

     Modern news has become a cesspool of roundtable discussions who offer opinions that are viewed with the same weight as facts to the point where a great deal of people cannot even tell the difference between the two as if what is fact and what is opinion is in some sort of debate. Kellyanne Conway’s comments regarding Press Secretary Sean Spicer and “Alternative Facts” are as clear as crystal and like the dinosaurs it seems the concept of objective facts are dying out. 

    “The internet is an orgy of thoughts screaming to be heard. The internet is a great hope for ideology, the great debate inside us all, an arena where even the most petty arguments are given equal footing to some of the deepest questions mankind can ask of itself. The internet should be applauded for its openness and shunned for the exact opposite that it is equally guilty of. The internet is a wealth of ideology and debate but it is also a den of wolves for factual knowledge. Misinformation creeps around every corner of the internet. It is sharpening its fangs waiting for the most gullible of people to listen and then it pounces with its misleading ideology and misspoken facts. It is a kaleidoscope of colors and ideas we were never meant to even see. It is a gangbang of information. It is an information overload.” - This is an excerpt from a story I’ve been writing about a supercomputer who starts to glitch because it has been programed by giving facts equal footing with conspiracy theories and I fear currently that that is happening now but not in the mind of a giant computer’s AI but in the minds of regular people. Living in information bubbles and echo chambers stoking the dangerous fire of cognitive dissonance that appears to be eroding rational thought by the billions. 

    To the core of what brainwashing actually is Trump is now the President because of your average citizens misunderstandings of the deepest core of brand marketing. Trump a word synonymous with winning at all costs, a name he says is his most valuable asset, a name we are all used to seeing in gold letters, and a name like most reality T.V. isn’t even real. We’ve not elected a man to lead us. We’ve elected a corporate logo, a symbol, void of any real purpose or true ideology designed to sell products off of that name and not their own merits. Trump is simply a mascot for American capitalism. He has no real political experience minus rubbing elbows and has riled people up for a game whose rules him and they don’t seem to understand and whose consequences are completely misunderstood. 

    According to a meme in a 1988 People Magazine interview Donald Trump said, “If I were to run, I’d run as a Republican. They’re the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and they’d still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific”. Well that’s not true at all. Trump never said that. It seems close enough to something he might say based on what we know about him and his speeches but it’s simply something that never happened. It might as well be a meme suggesting that the Loch Ness Monster has just been appointed head of the CIA. But if it were that it would be more transparently ludicrous. Memes have replaced the good old fashioned political cartoon which can always be easily seen as bias upon first sight but because modern internet memes are so easy to create and so quick to spread and reuse, because most of them are based upon simple templates, you don’t even need a basic understanding of art, graphic design, or politics to make one. The slippery slope of information has devolved into misinformation and slid into madness. Memes spread like diseases and few people tend to check on their validity. What does “Take My Money” Philip J. Fry, Pepe the Frog, or Condescending Wonka have to say about the crisis in Syria? Does Philosoraptor or The Most Interesting Man in the World have an opinion on the electoral collage? Why are there musical remixes of Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer getting punched in the face during an interview? Is anything of this helping? Or is it all just for show? Didn’t we just elect a reality T.V. star to the most powerful office on the planet earth? 

    Media nowadays is like the flavors in an ice-cream shop. Their used to be three vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry and whatever biases these flavors had seemed more transparent. But now with the advent of the new media boom the flavors are vast and like most psychological studies have shown people will stand mystified and unsatisfied trying to find that perfect flavor that suits their mood and in this case pre-established biases. It’s not real information. It is comfort food information. In terms of the media people tend to align with razor specific bias media that matches up with their ideology that blocks out the light of the full picture of objectivity like an eclipse. Some of that light escapes just enough to illuminate a story in order to draw the wrong conclusion about it. 

     The concept of echo chambers is one of the clearest examples of this cognitive dissonance. Take for example the meme heavy Facebook page of Occupy Democrats and now try to take into account that another Facebook Page called Occupy Democrats Logic whose slogan is “Doing their best to distort the truth, one bold lie after another”. This page was specifically created to rebut the other. By what method is it rebutting do you ask? Memes. Two apposing sites designed specifically to rebut specific topics in order for people to avoid the details of an actual discussion is what seems to be happening more and more. The entire bases of Reddit seems to be on threads that devolve into the absurd stream of consciousness. This is a microcosm what the internet is doing to our information and on a different level our consciousness. That whole fear of the MTV quick fix of information culture is now being exhausted by this device with seemingly limitless access to information and misinformation.  

    Most voters are single issue voters but still spread misinformation based on their implicit biases of these issues rather than looking at the bigger pictures overall. Abortion for example as a hot button issue is far more complex and nuanced than just a woman’s right to choose what she does with her own body or baby killing. There are deeper social implications with each law passed on this issue that stretches from the individuals it directly effects to the whole of society but the pros and cons of a full understanding cannot be weighed honestly on one side or the other but rather both. This goes with almost every issue. But humans raised on red bull, twitter, and simple soundbites do not seem to have the patience or time to understand deeply complex and nuanced issues and seem to be fine clinging onto their memes and slogans repeated ad nauseum like a tribal mantra. Each side of any particular issue not budging much creating circular arguments of the same points and counterpoints being repeated until both sides are too exhausted to continue a debate while committing fallacy after fallacy and not even bothering to notice. And this is much of why and how Trump won. “Make America Great” is a simple easily digestible slogan and Trump, like the great salesman he is, simply pushed it until it got him where he needed to be. All pop songs nowadays need a hook and a repeatable chorus. Trump’s chorus of American exceptionalism and making it great again was simple enough. Who honestly cares about the minutia of how and why he’ll be able to make it great or even if he is honestly qualified to do so.  Trump’s win also has to do with his celebrity status as a wealthy man. Did his supporters honestly know the tedious details of his business practices or where they believing the hype and bathing in the nostalgia of remembering him from such shows as “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous”. 

    A more personal story about this phenomena of celebrity worship that has somehow walked its way to the furthest reaches of power is from the point of view of a 4 year old boy. As I started this essay I was over at a house with a little boy playing with his Ninja Turtles. I was looking up articles on Trump and trying to figure out exactly what I’d say about him for this contest. As I scrolled past a picture of him the boy said “Hey that’s Donald Trump” with resounding enthusiasm. I was alarmed at how quickly he picked up on him. He recognized him it seemed quicker than he could make the distinction between Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo, or Leonardo. So I decided to do something rather dangerous for my own psyche. I looked up a picture, the most common type of picture, of Jesus. Surely he’d know who that was growing up in the deeply Christian south. The boy hesitated and eventual said with the inflection of a question ‘Jesus?’. I tried again with Martin Luther King Jr. He had no idea who that was. Ghandi…no clue. But Trump had already imbedded his mark inside this 4 year old’s mind. Trump has been a phantasm of how people view a wealthy man for many years. Trump has been planting seeds of his own greatness in the cultural psyche for years. Donald Trump is the very best of brand marketing. We remember him from ritzy news peaces, Home Alone 2, he’s made his way into rap music, and comedy bits about wealthy america. When someone says ‘rich american businessman’…tell me who honestly was the first person to come to your mind? 

   Numerous bankruptcies. He’s a great businessman. Numerous failed businesses. He’s a great businessman. He won’t release his taxes. He’s a great businessman. “Make America Great Again”. “Build that Wall”. “Lock Her Up”. America isn’t about happy content well fed well educated people. America is about making fucking money, capitalism. Make fucking money. Make fucking money. Make fucking money. And that mantra is repeated to which the only savior of the jobs of the dying middle class must come as a messiah almost the exact opposite of the first one washed in gold and proudly proclaiming he can make us all “winners” and “great again” the details of how and why are not important. Just remember you will be great again. 

    

   Trump in the calmest and plainest terms in his post election 60 Minutes interview said that he had ‘won the election easily’ but the numbers couldn’t be further from the truth. It was close. Too close to call. Too close I’d be comfortable to bet on, although I still did. But post winning like the faux alpha male he is he keeps repeating the mantra of a large populist win and his entourage does the same. It’s exactly how brainwashing works. Just repeat it as truth until the person you are repeating to believes it. Hilary won the popular vote by around 3 million votes. And no I’m not disputing his win. He won by the rules of this game but he still lost the vote of the people by one of the largest margins in election history. Was his camp humbled by that? Not at all. If your repeat a lie enough with enough confidence people will start to believe it and even if they don’t it makes your side seem stronger. They’ll still repeat it like a pufferfish puffing out his body to scare off predators. It doesn’t matter how empty the words are in the end if it makes you feel more powerful just take your placebo soundbite and repeat it like a winner’s mantra. Even if in the end you miss the entire point of what’s being discussed at least you feel powerful.   

   Paraphrased: “Twitter, Instagram, and FB are a modern form of communication. It’s where it’s at. I believe that the fact that I have such numbers with Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, helped me win all of these races where they’re spending much more money than I spend. I think that social media has more power than the money they spent and I think maybe to a certain extent I proved that”. This quote is from a 60mins interview with President Elect Donald J. Trump right after winning the 2016 election. 

    “Lock her up”, “Drain the Swamp”, “Make America Great”, “Build that Wall”. . . a battle cry for people who’ve mostly never seen a battle field yearning for some kind of meaning in their life by drumming up drama. But empty slogans and charismatic leaders are a lot more interesting than the tedious boring minutia of the political mechanisms that make our world and modern cultures tick. One of the main reasons Hilary Clinton lost the 2016 election has almost nothing to do with her politics and everything to do with her. Hilary Clinton is boring and comes across to most people as robotic and void of anything genuine. Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on fifth avenue and not lose one single vote from his base. I think he was right. Hannibal Lector, Ramsey Bolton, Alex De Large, The Joker, and Negan might all be great villains but the tragedy of the human condition is that they are mesmerizing to behold. And while I understand that it’s probably a gross hyperbole to compare Trump to these fictional characters Trump does hold true one deep connection to the human condition. Donald John Trump is fucking interesting. He hijacked mainstream American Media even with all the bad press he got because plain and simple he’s just fun to watch and our apathy to his insidious messages created a place for him to occupy the winner’s chair of the highest office in the entire world. As the great line from Gladiator said “Are you not entertained?” Donald Trump was on the WWE and body slammed Vince McMahon. Hollywood elites to most people come across as pompous and snobbish and despite his wealth Donald Trump appeals to the common man. We’ve elected a wrestling heel as President because here in America raw entertainment is king. 

      How does the modern proletariat fit in balanced political research in between their cat videos, pornography, pop songs, funny memes, nostalgic media, and that show they just can’t miss? I guess as I was told by many Trump supporters before the election…a gut feeling. 

      In this modern world of wonder and technology sadly we don't have heroes. We have social justice warriors. And we don't have villains. We have trolls. They are fought not with super suits and ideology but with poorly crafted memes and tweets and half-hearted half-edited soapbox speeches void of any heart or nuanced engaged reality and then we scroll to the next tiny moment of unfulfilling entertainment as the great poet once said, 'looking for an angry fix'. We sign petitions for politicians knowing damn well they won't make any real difference. It's all just showmanship an exhibition of our failure in this system. But do we listen? And we feel like Chaplin in the gears of a great machine being eaten slowly by the teeth, not knowing what any of it means, waiting, hoping, and praying for some relief. But this crazy fucked up world we live in is sometimes beyond belief.

        Nothing is more American than the election of Donald Trump a volatile entertainer selling capitalist American exceptionalism to the American middle and working class who mostly could care less about the details. Donald Trump represents what has become of the faded American Dream. Like a great salesman he’d been sowing seeds of doubt in Obama and rubbing elbows with Hilary for years learning the rules of this game and when time came to show his hand he laid down the ace up his sleeve. He’d been keeping in their all these years…The Trump Card. 

I've been finding myself trying to figure out weather I'm putting out fires that our burning down villages or putting out fires that are keeping the family warm. In battles of semantics and politics sometimes it's hard to tell. 

Dennis Hopper's House :

:My Experience with “The Last Film Festival”, the final film of Dennis Hopper, and my tour of the late great auteur’s mythic compound: (((Goes without saying but a very special thanks to director Linda Yellen.)))

                                                                     

         

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                                                        Daniel Louis Krone 

Dennis Hopper is without a doubt a cinema legend. 

My two favorite performances from the prolific actor are his role in “Apocalypse Now” as the American photographer trapped in a tribal village during the Vietnam conflict and my other favorite performance is Hopper’s larger than life role as Frank Booth in David Lynch’s classic film “Blue Velvet”. Both performances are drastically different and to me showcase the actor’s tremendous range. One thing about Hopper as an actor and a storyteller is he really relished in going there and pushing cinema to the limits as far as he possibly could in both performance and narrative. 

My introduction to Dennis’s final film happened immediately after my three and a half year journey as a production assistant on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”. A friend of mine, whom I will leave out of this essay, called me up and said that one of her boss’s friends, a producer, was looking for a personal assistant for a week. I said yes and the woman I met was director, writer, and producer Linda Yellen whom among several other projects was working on finishing “The Last Film Festival” which was to be the last film of beloved actor Dennis Hopper. 

Despite what you may already have heard about Dennis and his reputation as a wild psychonaut, who might be in good company with the likes of Hunter Thompson or Oliver Reed, from what I’ve heard from people that worked with him later in life was that he was a surprisingly gentle, sweet, kind, and jovial man. He seemed from stories, I’ve heard, just the kind of man that deeply enjoyed and relished the nuances of what it means to be alive. And men like that can get a little wild from time to time in my experience.

Let us get one thing strait. Dennis Hopper re-invented cinema. You might think Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, or even men like Louis B. Mayer invented Hollywood, and you might be right, but Dennis re-invented Hollywood and gave birth to the golden age of independent cinema that took place during the 1970’s.

In 1969 Dennis Hopper embarked on a journey with Jack Nicholson, Peter Fonda and producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson and made “Easy Rider”. There are two ways to look at cinema, in my opinion, everything before “Easy Rider” and everything after “Easy Rider”. Wether or not you like the film has absolutely nothing to do with the impact that film had on cinema as an art form. “Easy Rider” proved unequivocally to old school Hollywood producers that there was defiantly more than just the studio way of making films. I am not saying there weren’t great independent films throughout cinema history but at this point in time, before “Easy Rider” came out, American cinema was dominated by the studio system and this film is the one that brought the whole dam down and allowed the flood of fresh independent visions to emerge in the 1970’s. 

Dennis Hopper has 203 credits on the Internet Movie Database for acting along. He was nominated twice for an Academy Award. The first time he was nominated was for writing “Easy Rider” and the second was for his performance in the movie “Hoosiers”. Along with that Dennis had another 23 award wins and 11 other nominations for awards throughout his 55 year career in cinema in which he started out as a ‘goon’ on the film “Rebel Without a Cause”. 

I got the pleasure of touring his house via “The Last Film Festival” Kickstarter campaign. The film had been in a kind of post production hell for nearly 5 years since they wrapped principal photography and when the Kickstarter campaign finished Linda finally had the money to complete her film. It had been a pleasure helping her achieve her goal and because of it soon the world will have the chance to see the final film of a truly great talent. 

Dennis Hopper’s house is less of a house and more of a compound. When I first walked in my gut reaction was essentially, ‘well this is unimpressive’, because I guess I’d assumed the first room would be something wild and crazy but I was actually just waiting in a kitchen for others to arrive to take the tour. However as the tour progressed I became more and more impressed with Hopper’s compound and its eccentricities. 

As I took the tour his compound got stranger and stranger and more unique to me. It has an almost mythic quality to it like anyone who has ever seen Harlan Ellison’s house or been to the Playboy Mansion. There was just a strange quality to the entire estate. During the first part of the tour as I walked up the stairs in his first house it immediately became stranger. There were large wooden beams sticking out of the walls into a beautiful open air lounge area. As we continued the tour the tour guide explained that the ‘house’ was actually three different houses that formed like a compound and despite that one of the houses was clearly bigger Dennis used them all equally.  

There was something inherently modern and semi neo-brutalist about the design but with a somewhat more rustic and do it yourself quality about the estate that pulled it into the territory of strange that seemed to make a perfect fit with the late great artist. There was a kitchen ceiling fixture held together by rusted clamps that seemed to have been there for years. He had industrial ac units (designed for studios and warehouses) in his home, glass floors that you could peer down into the garage from, industrial wiring on gates, chain link fences on windows, the main house’s roof was a strange surreal dome and the entire compound is draped in sheet metal. We were told that was for the gangs and their stray bullets who would shoot up Venice back in the day.  Despite having a 3 house compound with a pool, hot tub, and croquet course the house still felt homemade like the dream of a grown man, an artist, who never lost his sense of playfulness. 

After about an hour and a half tour of explaining the history of when Dennis bought the estate I mostly left, not with the facts in my head, but marveling at the since of awe the compound left me with and I took away one very unique thought. This is the kind of house an artist lived in. This is the kind of house someone who changed the entire shape of cinema lived in. This house wasn’t obviously predictable in the way that most rich people’s houses are. This house was just as unique as the individual who made it his own. There was a definitely link to the wild unhinged free spirit as Dennis was to the wild unhinged architecture that made up his home. Touring Dennis Hopper’s compound and helping Linda complete “The Last Film Festival” was a wonderful experience I won’t forget anytime soon. (CLICK THE PHOTOS FOR A BETTER VIEW OF THE SPACE.) 

"JOKER REVIEW"

"Joker" in my opinion is the film of the year. 

It's not the film of the year because it is a 'flawless' film, far from it. I think some of the editing is sloppy and some of the story is sloppy but since the film is essentially from the point of view of a disjointed unreliable narrator in a wiggly state of mind most of the movie . . . I think a lot of that sloppiness is intentional and if not still works for me. 

"Laugh and the World Laughs with you, Weep and you Weep Alone" - OldBoy. 

"The thing about having a mental illness is everyone expects you to behave as if you don't". - Joker's Notebook - "JOKER". 

Joker right now is easily the most controversial film of the year from Phoenix walking out of interviews, to Todd Philips saying that 'woke culture' is the death of comedy, and the fears of what happened in Aurora, Colorado sparking new outrage and plenty of memes and think pieces about the potential for mass murder perpetrated by lonely white men identifying with the 80 years glorified laughing serial killer, self proclaimed, clown prince of Gotham. It seems to all be a kind of cultural smoke and mirrors now adding to the mystique of the film. After viewing the film it's apparent that this film isn't trying to glorify anything...or is it...? 

One thing that's apparently obvious to people are the influences of "Joker" and there are tons. Wether publicly stated or simply viewed the film evokes strong feelings from other films and while part of it does feel like a mashup of other film influences and sensibilities "Joker" still feels like, to me, a wholly unique film that got there on it's own if maybe using "The Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy" as guardrails to create a uniquely captivating piece about the state of mental health in a divided economic metropolitan landscape. Whether or not the film is set in Gotham or even if Arthur Fleck is the "Joker" from D.C. comics fame seems to be for the most part irrelevant as to what the film is actually about. 

The film has more in common with "The Taxi Driver" than it ever did with the D.C. universe.  

Travis Bickle also keeps a journal and in his haunting voice over he expresses his feelings. "Loneliness has followed me my whole life. Everywhere. In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere. There's no escape. I'm God's lonely man."

Robert Di Niro is of course in the film and puts in a wonderful performance as Murray Franklin. 

"Joker" the film seems to do two things both wading into the fears of the audience and also humanizing "Joker". While as chaotic fever dream and wild as the ending is, the point of the film seems to be beyond strictly chaos and nihilism but a poignant portrait of a delusional mentally handicapped man in a world that doesn't care about him. While little touches like him being off his meds, him never actually genuinely laughing, outside of one time, according to the director,  the film is deeply peppered with vagueness while being stunningly cinematic. It's a film whose interpretations seems be to very open to discussions that will keep this film around in the zeitgeist longer than most. 

Protesters Dress Up As Joker.

The film has sensibilities of other controversial films it leans on. However that seems apropos considering that the "Joker" himself was a reference to cinema from the 1928 film "The Man Who Laughs". 

 So if Warner Brother's and the filmmakers were acting surprised their controversial film was controversial than I'd simply suggest they were being purposefully being naive. The ending of the film has a fever dream tone that reminds me of "American Psycho" and the film as a whole has some of the vibes of "Man Bites Dog" where it seems the character is being set up for us to like him until the point he snaps, despite his obvious character flaws early on. 

 Joker appears to be a rich amalgam of all these sensibilities. It's not a new recipe so to speak but it's just a bunch of the same cinematic ingredients from different recipes all adding up to a wholly captivating film. "Joker" seems to address the zeitgeist regarding America's mental health crisis while also trying to fold that theme into a D.C. comics world. That aspect seems very sloppy to me yet considering the audiences reaction to the film seems to be deeply effecting after all we do use pop culture symbols to help us identify with ourselves. Perhaps "Joker" pokes at our dark IDs deep enough and reminds people that part of the human condition can be dark and isn't just a fairy tale happy ending. 


 The Joker has been around for a very very long time. The film doesn't re-invent him but rather takes various film ideas as well as comic book ideas and utilize them in a unique way using the frame work of "The Taxi Driver" and "King of Comedy". Joker has violently assaulted people on talk shows, he's skinned a man alive, and made crass jokes just before shooting security guards. 

                      Joker has become as far removed from the Cesar Romero and Dick Sprang Joker's of the past worried about laughing fish, giant violins, and pulling the greatest boner the world has ever seen. 

 "And though I can hide my cold gaze, and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are comparable I simply am not there." - American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis.


Despite a Golden Lion win and any future awards "Joker" has already stood apart from other comic book films and other films of this year for the controversy that ended up being such a dud, articles have been written with titles like "Journalists Upset Joker Hasn't Caused Violence" and discussions about toxic masculinity seem to have overshadowed a film whose thesis seems to want to discuss mental health within a toxic environment. It's the first film I can think of since "The Last Jedi" to have such a polarizing effect on the audience who viewed it and strangely enough thanks to projection and meme culture such a deep effect even on the audience who hasn't seen it in a way I can't remember that I've ever seen. Love it or hate it "Joker" seems to be deeply effecting as a film for the smorgasbord of design it is. 

 . . . 


 If this review, journal entry, seems like a hodgepodge of influences and disconnected thoughts and ideas consider that appropriate for the source material, which is a disjointed hodgepodge of influences and ideas with a singular brilliant performance...although I'd hardly refer to anything in this journal as brilliant. 

I would wax pedantic about the amount of subtle references to other controversial films but....most of it seems obvious to me and unimportant Easter Eggs. Hey...look, the same haircut.

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