WE ARE INDEPENDENTLY WEALTHY: December 2008

READING RESOLUTIONS (I)

first things first: let me finish what i start.

1. HOLLYWOOD BABYLON by KENNETH ANGER
fresh off of easy riders, raging bulls, the original bible of celebrity dirt.

2. THE BIG SLEEP by RAYMOND CHANDLER
started this twice, enjoyed it both times; let my first chandler not be my last.

3. REBORN: JOURNALS AND NOTEBOOKS 1947-1963 by SUSAN SONTAG
so far, this book chronicles the most preternaturally intelligent and intensely serious 14-year-old i have ever encountered. very interesting.

tis the season to enjoy this tune from 1982. ho ho.

while making our bed yesterday, i had a sudden thought: money changed and money changes. a friend told me that he thought and still thinks of me as someone who understands money (i don’t). maybe it simply says more about his understanding than mine. i suppose that it is nice to be thought of as a responsible person (i’m not).

anyway that sudden thought was that money has changed in my life several times. i have been both a deep recluse and absolutely homeless - once i even owned a home.
i have completely walked away from several careers and their comparative salaries and relationships. there have always been consequences which accounts for some apparent changes in money.

the introduction of the debit card by banks is another example of money changing. it made everyone aware of the feel of a credit card and naturally coincided with the speed of our attention spans. time is money but time is not money and plastic. time is erased by plastic. and plastic feels so cool in my hands and yours too, evidently.

one of my uncles suggested that greed also changed money. he’s right but greed is one of those obvious concepts when talking about money (it's in the top ten on family feud). and i prefer words to have broad strokes of meaning rather than seeing them tied to specific definitions or everyday allusions.

money changes and money has changed.

DIFFICULT TO MAKE A FEEDBACK

a new internet friend of ours writes exclusively in spanish. tonight i am plugging her text into a crude translator in an effort to at least understand her basic sentiment, which has rendered this strange and lovely little poetry. i think it's nice.
broken english is not broken, not really.

ON INFERIORITY COMPLEXES

from thom andersen's los angeles plays itself (2003), a fascinating, intricately researched documentary on the way los angeles has been depicted in the movies. here andersen looks at the use of los angeles' modernist residential architechture, those glass and steel dens of vice. in other words, where all the fun happens.
the scene from lethal weapon 2 is particularly wacky!

and the abbreviation L.A.? elsewhere in the film, andersen admits he hates it.
he sees it as a symptom of a city with an inferiority complex. huh.

THINGS KEEP HAPPENING

despite my suspicions to the contrary.

at least i don't have kids, hoo-ray

a sustained, romantic relationship will slow the pace of my life--this has always been true, and is even truer now that i am married--but when i think about it my life was never moving much faster, even when i was alone.

then what happened?

a woman i work with remarks that when people ask you about your life, what they’re really looking for is to be entertained, the same way they look to entertainment to entertain them, which is an awfully tall order, actually. she tells me that 2008, for her personally, was full of small improvements, privately meaningful but amounting to nothing much in the way of a good story. so i may worry that i have very little to report, but that doesn’t mean i haven’t done anything.
it just means i haven’t done anything i'm ready to tell anyone about.

MAN RAY, MAN RAY

this is a still from william wegman's one minute biography of the artist
man ray. it was originally made for a compilation of films about artists made by artists. it is funny and so, so smart, like all of wegman's films.

wegman's longtime collaborator is his weimaraner, man ray (1970? - 1981). man ray (dog) was born into his role as an artist and was involved in hundreds of wegman pieces transcending the borders of art and beyond.

this is such a fitting tribute to man ray (man) and i just know that he had to have loved it.

man ray, man ray was completed in 1978

click here to watch

thanks, always and forever to ubuweb

BOSS

from indeterminancy by john cage

FROM A SHOW ABOUT MONKEYS

monkey screen shots from our old tv.
i'm not sure why i did it but i took a barrel full of these photos.

more monkeys here

VANITY

i think more about my skin than any other single thing in my life. i fantasize more about clear skin than i do about sex, and the promise of one day having perfect skin forms the basis of all other fantasies about my success in the future. i've never said this to myself in so many words, but i realize now that it's true.
am i thirteen again?

magic molly's take on good skin

i thought about keeping a skin log, a daily account rendered in loving detail of every wash, every pimple, every improvement, and the mere thought of doing it got me more creatively motivated than i have been about anything in a long time. if harnessed right, can vanity be generative? let's see if the log thing pans out.

OBLIGATO GATO

it is embarrassing to be so fond of such a creature...
oh boots...boots....boots
it's even more embarrassing because he's soon to become a photographer

here's to our friend - jack boots for posing so nice

and here's to the great gato poder
for giving these beasts their proper attention and
mr. lee - some sales of what must be his most innovative device!