tomorrow we travel to phoenix for a few days to visit my mom.
in honor of this fine city and its angry, blameless sun, i would like to write about incidents in which rhan and i have been very hot. thank you.
1. this one time i took a nap at my mom's house and fell asleep with john coltrane playing faintly on the stereo. i woke up from this awful, feverish nap (because have you ever taken a nap in a really hot room? it's terrible) to hear "a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme" repeating over and over again and i thought surely i was dead and that this was hell.
2. this one time rhan got so hot in our apartment that all he could do was sit in a shallow tub of cold water and watch videos on his laptop. i wasn't home to see this, but it is a sorry and adorable thing to imagine.
3. another time i got out of the car after driving in phoenix in the summer and the back of my shirt was all spotty with sweat stains, and this was after, like, twenty minutes of driving. oh wait, that was every time i drove in phoenix in the summer.
4. too much sun makes rhan wilt. this fact has been documented many times.
wish us luck. we'll be posting from the road.
note: i just checked the forecast, and actually it's not supposed to be that hot in phoenix in the next few days. still, though, that place, in rhan's words, is positively atomic. steer clear from june through september!
"this gal's got a weight problem, she knows it."
fashion tips from frederick wiseman's documentary high school. ouch.
i saw titicut follies for a course in college and have wondered after frederick wiseman ever since. his name is noticeably absent from cinefile's documentary section (!?), but then last night, praise jesus, i found this clip on youtube and then found his dvds available for purchase on this site. oh dear, i want to see them all.
there is something about this sort of filmmaking that i really, really love.
what is that thing?
my humblest thanks to kwr212 for making this clip available.
so i was thinking yesterday that you can gauge rock and roll stars by how well their names could be used as nicknames for your genitals. bear with me.
to illustrate, here's how rhan's genitals and my genitals could be introduced:
chuck berry, meet...mama cass.
bo diddley, meet...nina simone.
ladies and gentlemen, the amazing miss nina simone!
grace slick, meet...little richard.*
*ew, that last one doesn't work on either count.
june carter, meet...johnny cash.
aw, that one is sweet!
i got stuck on how great a name chuck berry is for rhan's thing.
my ass, naturally, is chrissie hynde.
rhan's balls are ray & dave davies.
miss simone, chrissie--ladies, meet the gang...chuck berry and ray & dave davies.
now that's some beautiful music.
celine and julie go boating
one of the strangest and most exciting movies i've seen in a very long time
a beautiful looking film (the impetus for our watching it in the first place)
i can't believe i hadn't see this before now.
file under: artistic commitment, radass hairdos.
the monks make the top of my summertime playlist.
it's getting pretty hot over here. the little a.c. we installed in our bedroom window makes a lot of noise but does little for the rest of the apartment. it does makes me feel like we're sleeping in a motel room all the time though, so that's pretty fun.
i'm in the mood for scratchy rock and roll. i want some heat music.
i've got bo diddley on the brain, but that's just to start. and the monks, of course.
i am soliciting your suggestions and making a mix.
i'll send the finished copy to any interested parties.
higgle-dy piggle-dy!
mantis -part one
i was sent to a suburb of chicago, a town called naperville, for job training. i was on my own in a strange town. i felt a great sense of freedom but at the same time a looming dread that i was going to disappear on this trip. for instance, when i arrived at o’hare, the car that was to meet me was not there. i had a phone number for the training facility, but it was a sunday and there was no answer when i called. i had the address but i had no idea where i was in relation to naperville. i felt anxious and annoyed.
i decided to just wait it out at the airport, thinking perhaps my transport was stuck in some situation and would be along shortly. i bought a pack of cigarettes. i didn’t smoke, but i thought that i might use this trip to change things about myself. smoking seemed like a radical shift and i was bored and started plotting other ways to transform myself.
my grandfather told me to be careful on this trip, that chicago was a big town compared to my small town life and i would be a target for all sorts of nonsense if i didn’t pay attention. indeed, when i was on the pay phone trying to get through to naperville, my little boom-box was lifted by someone and it and the person had vanished. i was pissed off and embarrassed that within minutes of being on my own, my grandfather’s warnings had turned out to be true.
i was a small town local yokel target.
i finally took a cab to my address in naperville. i arrived at my hotel around ten that night and checked into my room. it was small and i felt trapped, so i decided to take a walk. i crossed the overpass of the highway and off in the distance i could see the lights of a strip-mall with a tremendous, empty, sunday night parking lot. the training site was located in this strip-mall. looking at the dark facility, the crappy hotel, and naperville made the dread of disappearing come back to me.
as i was heading back to the hotel, i looked straight up and into the sky. there was a loud clap of thunder and a flash of lightening as a torrential rain storm came down upon me. it was as if i had caused this deluge by looking up; within seconds i was soaked to the bone. i didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, so i think i did something like both. i chalked it up to the experience of living life; besides, it sort of erased my loneliness for a bit. i was hungry now and the small restaurant in the hotel was still open.
the lady at the cash register showed me to a booth, looking at my wet clothes with a combination of pity and something else. she brought me a menu and some extra napkins to dry off. i decided that i would have a steak and in the spirit of transformation, it would be the last red meat for me, forever! i would become a vegetarian, a smoking vegetarian, for no other reason than the sake of metamorphosis. i instructed the lady to cook my steak rare, flip it for five minutes only and bring it to me. i ate it and for the first time in this long day felt free and full of life. i was in a new place and i was a new person.
after this ceremonial meal, i bought another pack of smokes because my first pack was soggy. the rain had stopped so i stepped out of the hotel and walked to the fence at the edge of the property. i breathed in a dizzying puff and stared at the highway that in the distance disappeared into black. i remember thinking, maybe even saying it out loud, this chain-link fence, is the only thing keeping me from just walking off in the night.
it was the only thing in this world that kept me from vanishing.
halfway through the movie last night, i suddenly felt really silly for two things i wrote here yesterday: first, that errol morris movies are filled with "beautiful" images, and second, that i was "excited" to see this new film.
both of those things i said are still true. standard operating procedure was filled with some beautiful shots, and i was excited to see it. it's just that it feels wrong now to say either of those things about a film whose subject is so gruesome--so completely gruesome.
the movie explores the photos taken at abu ghraib. its subjects are the soldiers directly involved in, and responsible for, those photos. it is awful to watch, which i don't mean as an indictment of the film as a film; it's just not something, in retrospect, i would say i am "excited" to see. it makes you feel sick about war and about the people conducting the war on our behalf. it is not a good time.
but it does address a subject that needed to be addressed, and does so with intelligence and tremendous humanity. errol morris strikes me as a very decent person. i can't say i'd totally recommend this movie, but i would say it is worth seeing.
anyhow, i don't want to spend a lot of time on this.
i just needed to offer a revision.
phew. onto the rest of the day!
stills from fast, cheap, and out of control (1997)
tonight we are going to ucla to see standard operating procedure,
the latest documentary by errol morris.
though my heart of hearts lies with these fellas, i also count errol morris as one of our best documentary filmmakers. he's a unique voice in the world.
we were watching the trailer for the this american life series the other night, where ira glass pronounces, "it's like nothing you've ever seen on television."
my only response to this was "unless there's an errol morris movie on television," because that's what it looked like to me. oo snap.
but i'd bet good money they're errol morris fans over there, really.
his images are beautiful, trademark things,
and i am excited to see some new ones tonight.
heaps of gratitude to dvd beaver for the images. sort of obsessed with dvd beaver.
a midday snack of wolfgang rye, toasted with butter and fresh broccoli
and a light cast of cheddar might be a small sign to me
that my kitchen sensibilties are returning.
god, let’s hope so.
current project book is a mess,
shamefully unable to keep a coherent thought
for more than one or another.
oh just turn the page, oh ok, uh, turn to another.
a blurred reflection in the face of the kitchen clock
we are north americans
rob riggle current favorite daily show senior analyst
other current favorite daily show analysts
and how could i forget this good talker?
sorry the daily show was soooooo good last night
i've almost finished reading this self-help book written by a magician. my good friend sent it to me a long time ago. i can't tell if i'm reading it in earnest or as a gag.
this magician suggests you should try to sneak quarters into people's pockets when they aren't looking. he also talks about acupressure points. what?
i think there should be a self-help book club devoted to reading and discussing these books as literature. i'd join that club. i think these books are fascinating.
but then again, i'm susceptible. we're a certain category of people.
i think this book is helping me? the jury's still out.
it's kind of embarrassing to talk about.
"john cassavetes was...perhaps...the greatest director of actors...in this history of cinema?"
an over-the-top statement from film critic annette insdorf in charles kiselyak’s
a constant forge: the life and art of john cassavetes.
insdorf's delivery of that line makes my eyes roll every time i see it.
i have, however, enjoyed taking this statement and running with it:
"jack boots (our cat) is...perhaps...the greatest cat...in the history of cats?"
"this sandwich is...perhaps...the greatest sandwich...in the history of sandwiches?"
god bless you, annette insdorf, for both proving you can go too far, even with someone i love as much as john cassavetes, and for underscoring the problem endemic to most "making of" and "behind the scenes" docs out there.
it's too much, people, too much!
(1) there was this girl in the ninth grade whose favorite band was 311. on the date of the lead singer's birthday she brought a bunch of balloons to school. she carried them around with her all day long.
(2) the unpopular kid in my sister's grade in elementary school got in trouble once for stealing money from his parents. he got caught after bringing the money to school and handing it off to his classmates, offering them five dollars each if they'd be friends with him.
(2a) this same unpopular kid also got in trouble for swinging a pair of binoculars around wildly and accidently hitting another kid in the face. this happened in the school bathroom, i think.
(3) when i remember all the times my mom took my sister and i to water parks because we wanted to go--my mom, who to this day doesn't swim, and how awful, really, is it to watch other people at water parks--it makes me want to cry.
(4) my friend jamie from high school: her mom's favorite band was crowded house.
these stories have nothing to do with one another except that they occur to me a lot, and there's often no context in regular conversation for me to bring them up. i've tried, in regular conversation, but in those cases i have to shoehorn them in and by that point they fail to make the impression i think they could make,
if there was a context.
there's got to be an application for crap like this.
if you need to find us today, look here.
as far as i can remember, we always ate skippy chunky peanut butter in my household. i always assumed that everyone did. when i got to college, however, my roommate saw my jar and laughed because she had always considered skippy the "white trash peanut butter." she ate peter pan creamy.
on this finer point, i maintain that peter pan--let's face facts--is the lesser peanut butter. the larger point, however, is that peanut butter--or any other seemingly benign product--can be "white trash" or anything else. it isn't a matter of taste or quality--it wasn't to her then and it isn't to me now--but rather of some mysterious, free-floating geist that determines our prejudices and loyalties towards certain brands. i don't begin to understand it, and i certainly don't fight it, but when someone attacks some stupid thing you like, something you had before thought was inviolable, well, you begin to question the entire mechanism at work.
besides the obvious cases in which i stick to one brand because i've found over time that it works, tastes good, or otherwise proves itself superior--besides those cases, which are actually few in number, what determines my choice of one brand over another? from peanut butter and toilet paper down to things more decisive in how i see myself, like clothes or shoes or underwear--why those? and why would it be so easy (if reductive) to size someone up based on a simple list of their preferences and purchases?
if you start thinking about it too hard, it becomes impossible to buy anything.
or almost impossible, i should say. i still buy skippy.
i'm learning how to copyedit properly. i'm reading a book. i love any discipline that involves its own set of symbols and encourages handwritten marks on typed pages. also, red pens? the best. let me at it.
i am also thoroughly enjoying the latest CHIRP mix.
you look great, i think
lou reed & john cale from songs for drella
segment of empire by andy warhol
play them both at once!
much thanks to UhOh3991 & katyashagina
since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer. i think that's what's happening now. some kids i know personally are staying babies longer.
sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "so what." that's one of my favorite things to say. "so what."
"my mother didn't love me." so what.
"my husband won't ball me." so what.
"i'm a success but i'm still alone." so what.
i'm confused about who the news belongs to. i always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. but then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. so i guess you should pay each other. but i haven't figured it out fully yet.
a good plain look is my favorite look. if i didn't want to look so "bad," i would want to look "plain." that would be my next choice.
i loved working when i worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they'd say yes or no. the hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own. when i think about what sort of person i would most like to have on a retainer, i think it would be a boss. a boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.
amen, old standby.
in brief: relationship hypothetical
another impossible and stupid question i sometimes like to pose to rhan is this little doozy: would you cheat on me with me?
it is a hypothetical situation that pits his fidelity as a partner against the extent to which he finds me irresistible. there is no good answer to this question, though there might very well be a right answer, which of course makes the whole inquiry just plain mean.
scramble the proposition, however, and ask me whether i, being me, would pursue rhan knowing he was currently involved with me, and i would probably answer "yes" pretty quickly, and without a great deal of soul-searching, too.
i need to think about that for awhile.
and there are so many examples of good talkers out there,
i think that it would make a great idea for a whole other blog, the good talkers.
-hmmm, might have to pursue that one.
now, it doesn't necessarily have to have much to do with the sound of a voice, though that can be important as well.
a great example of that is john huston who was very articulate and had a very fine voice. daniel day lewis recently helped us all remember what a great talker huston was!
daniel day lewis received an acadamy award for it, actually.
kate hepburn, truman capote, betty davis and orson welles, john cage and andy warhol are other late great talkers that i take pleasure in listening to.
there's funny thing about the talk of john cage. my old friend xtevion from reno does a spot-on impression of john cage which he can easily interchange as a spot-on impression of vincent price. i never realized how similar in style both price and cage were until i heard xtevion mimic their talk.
that's the interesting thing about a lot of great talkers. they are easy to imitate.
impressions are entertaining but nothing beats the listening experience of the actual talk of the good talker.
you know, it's the language that these good talker's employ.
a language that is comfortable and familiar to the talker's talk.
a language owned by the one speaking.
my latest obsession is dick cavett who is an excellent example of one who knows his language and how to use it. dick cavett is particularly interesting because he writes almost exactly the way he talks. his latest blog entry is the inspiration for this very post. (see link below)
often it is the talker's idiosyncratic behavior while they are talking
and the more odd quirks or mannerisms the better for me, usually.
for instance, some people repeat the same stories every time you see them.
that can be annoying or hilarious depending on the talker, i suppose.
i worry that i am one of those people...one of those annoying talkers.
some people say the same phrase over and over
or simply repeat the last thing they said 3 times.
now, i love that kind of talker because there was an old man that used to hang out with my grandfather that used to do that a lot.
'well now, there's lil' ronnie, yeah, lil' ronnie, lil' ronnie!'
repeating the punchline to a joke as the laughter subsides is a peculiar and interesting technique of the amateur comedian.
i love the use of a name or the familiar 'my friend' to whom the talker is talking.
'now, rhan, my friend, words cannot convey the vertiginous retching horror that enveloped me as i lost consciousness....'
that one is a quote from 'uncle' bill burroughs, another great talker, who never actually said this to me personally, though i am pretending here that he did as an illustration.
i am also quite fond of those talkers finishing their statements with hmmm? or yes? or no?
-my adorable wife will do this on occasion and i find it thrilling!
i like the pauses, the search for the correct word, the rubbing of eyes or the stroke of a chin, the arch of eyebrows and sometimes even a look from side to side or a backwards glance before finishing.
when i was in school, i had a russian friend that spoke in fits of what seemed like frustration and anger but was more about his understanding of the english language. i use to enjoy his questions in class and how the instructors would react as though my friend's inquiry was an insult or critique of the lesson.
once i figured out his talking style, he and i became fast friends, so much so that i became his translator for everyone else, even though i don't speak a word of the russian language!
so, when you are out there, amongst your contemporaries, be sure and listen, i'm sure there are plenty of great good talkers all around you. enjoy them like music--that is of course, if you happen to enjoy music.
me, i have a pea sized ball of hate for music, but that's a whole other post for some other day and perhaps some other blog somewhere else.
talk at you, later
r s e
dick cavett's latest brilliant blog entry, talk show
a personal note
someone very close to me has just begun a new romance. i learned this delightful news on the phone today. also today, i thought about mama cass singing "dream a little dream," and how hearing her sing it for the first time was very significant for me. i wanted so much to be the voice singing that song, to be the person playing that piano. it is simple, sweet, and terribly lovely.
so my friend is happy and i thought of this song. here's mama cass singing it on the smothers brothers show. a little hokey, a little silly--kind of like being in love, no?
in brief: puzzles
hey, here's a puzzle for you:
a man lives on the twelfth floor of an apartment building. every morning he takes the elevator down to the lobby and leaves the building. in the evening, he gets into the elevator, and, if there is someone else in the elevator -- or if it was raining that day -- he goes back to his floor directly. otherwise, he goes to the tenth floor and walks up two flights of stairs to his apartment.
what the hell, here's the answer:
the man is a dwarf. he can't reach the upper elevator buttons, but he can ask people to push them for him. he can also push them with his umbrella.
what? here's another one!
a body is discovered in a park in chicago in the middle of summer. it has a fractured skull and many other broken bones, but the cause of death was hypothermia.
but how? obviously:
a poor peasant from somewhere in europe desperately wants to come to the united states. lacking money for airfare, he stows away in the landing gear compartment of a jet. he dies of hypothermia in mid-flight and falls out when the compartment opens as the plane makes its final approach.
these, my friends, are lateral thinking puzzles, or "situation" puzzles, depending on who you ask. they've been on my mind since i walked in on my coworkers in the midst of one last week. they are also on my mind because i hate them. i mean hate. for the record, i'm not here to hate on my coworkers (whom i like) or anyone else out there who enjoys these sorts of riddles.
it's just that these things are stupid.
i know this is an easy question/complaint, but i have to ask: what is the point? is anyone satisfied by the kinds of answers listed above? these puzzles not only bore me but offend my very sense of gamesmanship; there is nothing clean or essential about these solutions. the answers to these problems are meandering and arbitrarily determined, and if i wanted meandering and arbitrarily determined causes for weird situations, well, i'd just look to my actual life.
examples abound there, i can assure you.
hey! on that note, here's another "puzzle" for you:
i am sitting at my computer sipping a mimosa. suddenly, i realize my hands feel really dry and dirty and there is a unpleasant odor in the air.
omg! here's the answer:
i live in los angeles, a city currently experiencing an unseasonable heatwave. i decided to drink a mimosa because it is cool and refreshing. my hands feel dry and dirty because our apartment is really hot, and the smell is coming from my sweaty feet. and my feet got sweaty because i worked all day today. making coffee.
who got it? if you did, five hundred points to you. you win. let's end the game early.
lateral thinking puzzles make me really surly and no, i won't get over it.
also, it's too damn hot in here.
we felt that we needed some felt
video....state of the art 3... joseph beuys...plight 1986
photo....hat o4o8
almost but not quite
i found tom horacek's work through an old post on boing boing.
his book is called all we ever do is talk about wood.
this poor, backwards centaur is sitting against the wall, despondent.
this is exactly the kind of thing i like.
it is adorable and sad.
i'm gritting my teeth i love it so much.
albert maysles
thursday night, juliet and i went to the hammer for an evening with albert maysles and a screening of two of his and his brother david's films
with love from truman
©1966, directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 16mm, b/w, 29 mins
meet marlon brando
©1965, directed by Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin, 16mm, b/w, 29 mins
it was a very inspiring and somewhat short evening
which was great because it gave us time for a quick bite
and to return home to our jack boots
and of course, to post to post and to post again.
get intimate!
jonas mekas-
an interview from 3am magazine
with blue links to everything jonas mekas internet circa 2005
and jonasmekas.com (which is a world unto itself)
with a tremendous amount of films from the jonas mekas film library
each film costing about the same as a hollywood mp3
on not making it very far
the winner of our trip this weekend was hotel television.
to be fair, portland is a beautiful city. the weather was crisp and walkable, the buildings old, the trees plentiful and gorgeous. i was struck by the easy-going commuters and the old and spacious architecture of the place, and i left definitely understanding its appeal. for us, however, i'm not so sure. there were factors converging to make our particular trip as uneventful as it ended up being, not the least of which was overindulging at the hotel bar the second night and feeling so hungover the next day that staying in bed seemed like the best option. plus, the bed was really comfortable. and the tv remote had nice big buttons. and there's so much crap to watch.
somewhere between "no reservations with anthony bourdain" and the second half of an episode of "the gilmore girls"--the second half, i must note, of an episode whose first half i had already seen the afternoon of our arrival--rhan said, "we've sort of abandoned our trip, haven't we?" and it was true; we had abandoned it. i wasn't born with explorer blood in my veins, and i've learned through experience that i require vacations long enough to factor in hotel television time, or sleep-in time, or time to skip the seeing of sights. the problem with this trip was that it was too short to enjoy this sort of laying about without dull pangs of preemptive regret, the feeling that more adventurous people than us would be doing things and seeing things. but that's the way i am, and that's the way it went.
still, i count this trip as a success, if for no other reason than it confirmed the giddy and googly-eyed love i have for my husband. trips like these remind me that our marriage is still an affair, roaming and a little illicit, slowly finding its way home.
and if that affair includes occasional crap tv binges, all the better.
(aside: omg the gilmore girls omg.)
los angeles is warming up, and our apartment is relatively clean. our cat is ecstatic we're home to let him in and out of the building at his will, which we've been happily obliging (until it becomes annoying again). and i'm so happy to be near my computer.
i really am a tremendous homebody, aren't i?
we're back!
we're home again. our trip to portland was brief, lazy and full of trees.
i have more to say about portland but for now we're off to see albert maysles.
it's so good to be home!
we're hitting the road
tomorrow, rhan and i head to portland for four days.
it is impromptu! it is a road trip! there is a forecast of rain!
i am terribly excited. pictures and stories are sure to follow.
circle theme
go here please
EDITORIAL NOTE: though he won't say so himself, this is one of the best pieces rhan has ever made. it is repetitive, funny, totally enchanting--in short, all the things i love and strive to make. watch it again and again. (j.s.e.)
the first of the month: april 2008
HEROES: orson welles on the dick cavett show. one of the most fascinating interviews i have ever seen involving two endlessly charming and kind-faced men. orson talks about his incredible childhood, describes his problem with jerry lewis, and presses dick cavett with hard and playful questions about his former acting career. great, great television.
ATTITUDE: optimism in the face of weariness, especially where my job and money are concerned. it has been a trying week at work already, and while the ensuing drama didn't involve me directly, it has had a pretty unwelcoming effect.
i am treading lightly and keeping my chin up. i'm pretty good at that.
EVENT CALENDAR: albert maysles is speaking at the hammer on the 10th.
the albert maysles, who along with his late brother is one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. will he show clips of the gates? i hope so. will i work up the nerve to ask him a question? probably not.
OBTAINABLE GOAL: to finally frame and hang our lovely godard poster.
