Love Cuts Like a Cheese

“Love Cuts Like a Cheese” Notes
The premiere video from "Convulsions of Birth and Death" (CoBaD). The name was inspired by a paragraph from Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience":
"As for adopting the ways which the State has provided for remedying the evil, I know not of such ways. They take too much time, and a man’s life will be gone. I have other affairs to attend to. I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad. A man has not every thing to do, but something; and because he cannot do every thing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong. It is not my business to be petitioning the governor or the legislature any more than it is theirs to petition me; and, if they should not hear my petition, what should I do then? But in this case the State has provided no way: its very Constitution is the evil. This may seem to be harsh and stubborn and unconciliatory; but it is to treat with the utmost kindness and consideration the only spirit that can appreciate or deserve it. So is all change for the better, like birth and death which convulse the body."
The title was inspired by two songs: "Cuts Like a Knife" by Bryan Adams and "Love Stinks" by The J. Geils Band.
Voiceover: "The organist-in-residence, Eugene Rottenberry, has managed to stay within publishing distance of the director, staying nearly a semitone off the lead with the organist-out-of-residence, Luke Film, serving vodka tonics and royalty checks to Mr. Studio in the clubhouse, who, despite his extremely slurred speech and 0.20 blood alcohol content, is still delivering more thoughtful and articulate dialogue than Luke Film ever did." - A knock on George Lucas’s Star Wars movies. A member of our troupe first saw “Star Wars” (Episode 4) when he was eight years old, and he understood it. When he saw it years later, it was then he realized how stilted and painful the dialogue was to listen to. Episodes 5 and 6, and later Episodes 1, 2 and 3 were the same way. He has not seen the post-Disney takeover movies, so he couldn't really comment on those.

Incidentally, the banners "Down" on the left side of the podium, and "Up" on the right side, are pictorial representations of the motto of the Church of the Immaculate Contradiction: "Down is up and up is upside down." This is not so much an indictment of churches as it is the artists whom seem to be constantly contradicting themselves by claiming artistic integrity whilst at the same time trying to milk as much money out of their works as possible by issuing sequels and remastered collection editions.

Father Garceny: “And Yossarian said unto the Lord, ‘Have you been smoking something I haven’t got around to naming yet? I don’t speak gibberish. You’re making about as much sense as a man who fought in a war he said he didn’t mind fighting in who wrote a novel about the madness of a war he never fought in that took place after the war he did fight in but was set in the war that he didn’t mind fighting in. Now kindly continue the rest of this conversation in English, please.’”

Alludes to Joseph Heller himself. Catch-22 took place during World War II. Mr. Heller said he didn’t find fighting in that war. Mr. Heller stated that the antiwar sentiment in the book was really a reflection of the Korean War (1950-1953), the Cold War (1947-1991) and McCarthyism (1940s and 1950s), all of which took place after the events in this book. “What does a sane man do in an insane society,” Heller asks? Put that whole mess into a book and make an insane amount of cash off of it, that’s what.

Geoffrey: “By ‘money shot’ of course I mean the chance for Lord Heller to cash in on his past glory by signing a lucrative deal and then proceeding to all out tarnish his legacy by schlepping out a half-assed sequel. He’s about 33 years off the green and 10 years off the mark…” - “Catch-22” (published in 1961), took place in 1944. Yossarian was 28. “Closing Time,” the sequel to “Catch-22,” took place in 1994, but Yossarian’s age is listed in the book as 68, not 78 (see Book 1, Chapter 3). When asked about the inconsistency in an interview with The New York Times, Heller said, "I know, but I decided to ignore it." Now that’s half-assed.

Geoffrey: “…so I’d say he should go aggressive with this worship and make the second reading a reading from the first book of “The Little Prick.”
Stan: Really?
Geoffrey: Yeah, or even something from “The Pizzle Feint John the Awful to the Pathologists” is in order. “ - Specifically, Book 1, Chapter 2 and Book 1, Chapter 3 of Joseph Heller’s “Closing Time.” Chapter 2 is a short chapter which portrays a fictional account of an event that took place shortly after to the resignation of Richard Nixon. Chapter 3 concerns Yossarian, who checks himself into a hospital and tries to convince the doctors that he is ill, but the doctors are unable to find anything wrong.

References:
CNN (13 December 1999). Heller's legacy will be 'Catch-22' ideas. Retrieved August 30, 2007.

Heller, J. (1994). Catch-22. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. First published in 1961.

Heller, J. (1994). Closing Time: The Sequel to Catch-22. Simon and Schuster Paperbacks.

Heller, J. (1977). "Reeling in Catch-22". In Lynda Rosen Obst (ed.). The Sixties. New York: Random House/Rolling Stone Press. pp. 50–52.

Thoreau. H.D. (1849) Civil Disobedience.

YouTube. Bryan Adams. Cuts Like a Knife. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VZhSkREYBc

YouTube. The J. Geils Band. Love Stinks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0LAs7X5ybE