Midsommar is exactly what I envision goes on in women-only co-working spaces…
Let it out, girlfriend
This Image from the Movie…
June 30, 2019Performance Art
June 28, 2019I’ve always not-so-secretly wanted to be a performance artist––bummed Marina Abramovic’s school is never gonna happen!––and I remember recently one of my only good ideas for an endurance piece, which was embedded in the text of a sort of pretentious poem I wrote a few years ago:
I retype the entire text of War and Peace on stage at the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires in one sitting. If a success, I go on tour, and “perform” Infinite Jest atthe Paris Opera House, Remembrance of Things Past at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, and Gone with the Wind at the Sydney Opera House. All performances will be recorded and available for purchase through Apple.
I could add more performances, too! I can think of long books and storied opera houses for days.
HAPPY BLOG-IVERSARY!
June 4, 2019Dear ones! (I just read a great takedown of Elizabeth Gilbert so that’s tongue-in-cheek.) Guess what? This blog has been alive for 10 years TODAY! Remember this first post, in which I implored people not to read? Luckily, a vast majority of the planet’s population got that memo! If you’re still on board with me here, please meet me for drinks at 11 PM tonight at the American Colony Hotel, Louis Vincent Street 1, Jerusalem. L’chaim!
Put Me in Your Will, Mr. Waters
June 3, 2019There’s a new article out about John Waters, which focuses on his art collection, one of my favorite topics. You’ll recall, I’m sure, that many years ago I wrote him a note offering to be caretaker of his art collection when he dies. I would probably strike a different tone now, but what’s done is done.
The new piece features a number of pictures of Waters’s pieces from my favorite “genre” of art, trompe l’oeil! The toilet paper dispenser, light switch, olives, playing cards and pencil in these pictures are fake! Basically my dream is to have an apartment riddled with fake things just to confuse my guests.
You Don’t Need That, Either
May 20, 2019In the past few years, I’ve read myriad lists of what you NEED to buy for a baby, many written by people who claim expertise for one reason or another (they have kids, they write about having kids, or both). This latest, by writer Emily Gould, attempts to once again be the last word on what you need when you have a baby, and she does a good deed by naysaying some of the things people believe are essential but aren’t really (like baby monitors, particularly if you live in small dwellings) and yet it, too, includes a number of things that are not necessary. I know no one will read this, but allow me to be, once and for all, the most minimalist of all minimalist parents and tell you what you really and truly need:
- Baby clothes. Ideally kimono-style onesies. ZERO pairs of infant socks. They will inevitably fall off. Burn all the infant socks you get on a tiny bonfire. Zutano-style booties are only option for infants.
- A baby carrier. It doesn’t really matter what kind.
- A carseat
- A bassinet or crib.
- ZERO SLEEP SACKS OR SWADDLES OF ANY KIND. Yes, you heard that correctly. You can swaddle your baby in little blankets until they start fighting them, and then you can wean them off swaddles as early as four months. I actually think these swaddles are doubly egregious as a “must have” baby item, because so many basically guarantee they’ll put your children to sleep and of course, no product is magical like that.
- You don’t need a baby bathtub. Use the sink until they can sit, then use a regular bathtub.
- Some kind of seat for the baby: we have a Bjorn bouncy chair, and it’s great.
- NO BREASTFEEDING PILLOW. Use a regular fucking pillow, it is the same thing.
- Bottles.
- For mom: at least one pair of shoes you don’t need to bend down to put on or lace up.
THAT IS LITERALLY IT. Don’t even make a registry. You’re welcome.
Rage!
May 10, 2019A few years ago, I wrote about how Tennessee Williams’s brother refused to honor his last wish to be buried at sea. This week, while reading Assia Wevill’s biography, I learned that Ted Hughes also refused to honor her wish to be buried in a small country cemetery in England, and for her epitaph to read, “Here lies a lover of unreason and an exile.” But of course Hughes the SCOUNDREL had her cremated. Okay, so he did apparently spread them in a churchyard in Kent somewhere, but that isn’t good enough! Since there is no body to be recovered here, I suggest we erect a gravestone as a memorial. If I were a conceptual artist I would do this.
I know it’s cliched to hate Ted Hughes but I do, I really do.
This post brought to you by someone who one night this week downed a glass of port and cried copiously about the untimely end of Shura Wevill-Hughes.
RIP
May 6, 2019“War and violence, it has been said, are as old as mankind. The vision of peace is perhaps as old as civilization. Since the most ancient times, as techniques of mass killing have mounted from the sling and the spear to the cannon, Gatling gun and the supersonic missiles outfitted to kill whole cities, there have been voices counseling an alternative way. These are the voices of the pacifist conscience––seldom heeded, yet perennially posing a choice for each generation. Historically, it was usually in turbulent times that men’s thoughts turned most to peace, and such a time is the present.
“The terms in which the choice is set before us today are by no means simple and easy. The use of violence in the resolution of differences has implications which were never more frightening. Total destruction is now a practical possibility. We have two objects: we must find adequate ways of making peace and we must learn to achieve social goals without resorting to violence.”
~The Pacifist Conscience by Peter Mayer
Additions to List
April 28, 2019Back in this post, I said there should be names for films that use either regular people to play characters much like themselves/non-professional actors exclusively or a mix of professional and non-professional actors. Kind of like, filmic auto-fiction? Anyway, I named a few movies that fall into this category, but I have some more to add: La Pointe Court (Agnes Varda) and Man of Aran. I’m sure there must be a name for this type of cinema, so please, by all means, can some snobby first year film MFA student school me on this?
Relate?
April 4, 2019“If I had a dollar for every time I wish someone I loved dead, I’d be the richest woman in the world.” ~Big Love
Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, Trans-Asians (Alternative Title: Ugh)
March 26, 2019This just strikes me as the most entitled white male writer shit ever. A TIBET OF THE MIND?! If these guys were alive and tweeting in 2019 they’d be flayed alive.
“Thinking to have a horoscope of Durrell drawn up, [Miller] asked for details of his birth. Told that he had lived on the borders of Tibet, close to the Forbidden Land, he was thrilled, he said, because he himself was a Chinese at heart. Miller‘s interest soon took Durrell back to his childhood in Darjeeling, and, soon after, he discovered My Journey to Lhasa by Alexandra David-Neal, who had gone on foot to Lhasa in 1923. It confirmed his Tibetan ‘ancestry’ and he began to cultivate his ‘Tibetan’ side, claiming he lived in a sort of Tibet of the mind. If Miller was a Chinaman, then he himself was a Tibetan.”
Through the Dark Labyrinth: A Biography of Lawrence Durrell, Gordon Bowers
