Willy Wonka, Willy Wonka....
if you haven't yet, go here and watch the trailer for the Tim Burton's Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory. Johnny Depp manages to play every degree of bizarre character without ever really repeating himself, I love it. One can argue that both Ichabod Crane and Fred Abberline were both sleuthy detective types, but Depp managed to capture Crane's lack of self-confidence incredibly well. This fact alone set the two roles apart for me, well that, and the fact that Abberline was an opium addict. Regardless, I can't wait to see Tim Burton's take on this movie, a "children's" film I've always felt was INSANELY creepy.
Of Oompa Loompas And Suicide
Jim Jones had a mouth
feeding on the black man’s exclusion
from the American dream.
Jim Jones had a degree
from Indiana University, one
from Butler too. In Indianapolis
his movement began
to coalesce and take shape,
coiling like a snake
moving through San Francisco and Carolina
returning all the way home
to the middle
of the steaming feral jungle
where The People’s Temple drank
grape drink and cyanide, liquid
Valium, and chloral hydrate too.
They needed
a distraction for the children. They
put Willy Wonka on the tube.
276 conscious, attentive,
not to mention dying children
might have caused problems,
crises of conscience,
in the forcible distribution
of lethal injections and assault rifle rounds
to waiting skulls.
Momma always said,
“Life is like a box of Oompa Loompas,
little orange and green
Oompa Loompas wrapped in white
wax paper, ready to be eaten,
waiting.”
Well Mom,
I’m waiting
while the student movie channel
here in Bloomington has been
showing the rise and fall
of Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt,
of Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teevee
at regular intervals
for the past 3 months.
I am waiting
with John Fogerty howling from my turntable,
but what I want to know is
not whether
anyone has seen the fucking rain
that has been falling
at regular intervals
for the past three months,
not where Jim and Augustus,
Veruca and Violet,
where Mike and 276 other children all went when
the factory swallowed them whole,
no,
what I want to know is
just what those A/V pricks
were trying to pull
by programming every-other-daily
dosages of Gene Wilder
into schedules filled to the brim
with drinking and research
because up until now
I believed my psychedelic-induced theories
of suicide pacts and depressed college students
to be the products of paranoia
and too much TV.
I suppose the Creedence record will keep spinning though,
and I suppose bodies do sometimes fall from tall buildings,
but I cannot shake the feeling
that Slugworth and the angel of death are waiting,
down on the corner
at a mundane house party,
the two wearily scanning the room,
trading jokes when the reaper questions
from within the depths of his black cloth hood,
“Did you try the punch?”
I bought presents for some of my family members today with my own money. It felt really good.
Of Oompa Loompas And Suicide
Jim Jones had a mouth
feeding on the black man’s exclusion
from the American dream.
Jim Jones had a degree
from Indiana University, one
from Butler too. In Indianapolis
his movement began
to coalesce and take shape,
coiling like a snake
moving through San Francisco and Carolina
returning all the way home
to the middle
of the steaming feral jungle
where The People’s Temple drank
grape drink and cyanide, liquid
Valium, and chloral hydrate too.
They needed
a distraction for the children. They
put Willy Wonka on the tube.
276 conscious, attentive,
not to mention dying children
might have caused problems,
crises of conscience,
in the forcible distribution
of lethal injections and assault rifle rounds
to waiting skulls.
Momma always said,
“Life is like a box of Oompa Loompas,
little orange and green
Oompa Loompas wrapped in white
wax paper, ready to be eaten,
waiting.”
Well Mom,
I’m waiting
while the student movie channel
here in Bloomington has been
showing the rise and fall
of Augustus Gloop and Veruca Salt,
of Violet Beauregarde and Mike Teevee
at regular intervals
for the past 3 months.
I am waiting
with John Fogerty howling from my turntable,
but what I want to know is
not whether
anyone has seen the fucking rain
that has been falling
at regular intervals
for the past three months,
not where Jim and Augustus,
Veruca and Violet,
where Mike and 276 other children all went when
the factory swallowed them whole,
no,
what I want to know is
just what those A/V pricks
were trying to pull
by programming every-other-daily
dosages of Gene Wilder
into schedules filled to the brim
with drinking and research
because up until now
I believed my psychedelic-induced theories
of suicide pacts and depressed college students
to be the products of paranoia
and too much TV.
I suppose the Creedence record will keep spinning though,
and I suppose bodies do sometimes fall from tall buildings,
but I cannot shake the feeling
that Slugworth and the angel of death are waiting,
down on the corner
at a mundane house party,
the two wearily scanning the room,
trading jokes when the reaper questions
from within the depths of his black cloth hood,
“Did you try the punch?”
I bought presents for some of my family members today with my own money. It felt really good.