Thursday October 15th part 1

Building pressures for you to succeed will eventually lead to a meltdown if you let them. Now is the time to remain steadfast as your good deeds will pay off in the end. Your power numbers are 9, 76, 54, 3, 20.

I like to imagine this is what the men of the Maysles' documentary Salesman (1968) would have read. First of all because they all looked half-cocked and ready to implode after each conversation in which the middle class housewife tries squirmingly to say she can't afford the brand new edition of the missals with all of the new additions while bearing in mind they come in either red or white (wowzah!). My favorite refusal was exactly this situation. James "the Rabbit" Baker (they all have mammalian counterparts) was attempting to sell the Good Book to a hispanic woman who only understood basic english. She refused and refused in as many words as she knew, but he was relentless! They don't call him "the rabbit" for nothing. He offered her the all the lastest, hot off the press missals. All she had to do was learn to read english and pay $1 a week for a year! What a fool for not ordering immediately! Eventually, after minutes of beratement and unsuccessful guilting "the rabbit" becomes silent, his mouth twitches ever so slightly, and over the sound of the woman's children in the house you can hear all the blood in his body being rerouted to his left eye where a vein looms above his forehead. You could feel the heat from his hands as they itched to lunge across the table y estrangular a la mujer. 5 out of 5 --best repressed anger scene.



The entire movie is nearly this entertaining. By the end we were all surprised none of them had mailed in their warranty cards, sunned their moccassins, face-planted the meringue, or checked into a single room flat (we need to bring these euphamisms back). The lives the salesmen lead are utterly depressing; first of all for being forced to sell Bibles. Sell. Bibles. The ultimate opus dei of the 20th century. Door to door. Bible-less Heathen to bible-less heathen. However, when their own morality is inspected, the conclusion is rather ambiguous, as it should be. These gentlemen aren't out to save souls, they're out to sell glossy-paged, ten pound bibles to naggy wives who feel their husbands would benefit from the high-def (for 1968) pictures and navigable translation. Secondly, their traveling days are spent in cramped hotels where they can call their own naggy wives and gamble the night away while chain smoking and sharing their failures with the rest of the group. Thirdly, well, you should just watch the movie.

In my mind the Maysles can do no wrong. Gray Gardens entry up soon.


If you ever wondered what the Beatles' Yesterday sounded like over the top of shameless pandering and passive hate, here you go--