Woah Woah WOAH!

July 23, 2009

So I’m chilling, minding my business, cleaning my room, and there’s this documentary about People’s Temple playing on the television in the background. (I much prefer television as background noise these days, things I’ve seen usually, so I don’t have to pay close attention. Music just isn’t doing it for me.) So this particular documentary…I’ve seen three-quarters of it, like, a billion times, so I’m zoning out, organizing shoes, throwing stuff away, and the moment I decide to zone in, I hear…

“The first time I met Jim Jones was Easter 1953. My mother-in-law, Edith Cordell, had a monkey and it (very brief pause) hung itself, and she wanted to replace the monkey and so she looked in the Indianapolis Star, and in that Indianapolis Star was Jim Jones’ ad that he had some monkeys to sell.”

WHAT!? Never has a more ridiculous sentence been spoken.

More Jim Jones tomorrow…sleep well!

Woah!

July 22, 2009

After posting last night’s tattoo montage, I saw a freakishly beautiful girl on the subway this morning with the elephant-in-the-snake (colored in) tattooed to her right forearm!

I think it’s weird to look at which posts are viewed the most. Apparently Blake the Tom’s Shoe Guy is the most viewed. I heard he’s super Christian and only dates models. There goes that fantasy.

Goodnight, Moon

July 22, 2009

Putting on some sleeping music (see below) and pretending someone is stroking my hair. Even grown-ups want to be tucked in sometimes…

“Boots of Spanish Leather” by Bob Dylan

“Kolo Kolo” by Bobby McFerrin

“All I Need” by Air

“Julia” by The Beatles

“Tiger Mountain Peasant Song” by Fleet Foxes

“Further on Up the Road” by Johnny Cash

“River” by Joni Mitchell

“Chelsea Hotel No. 2” by Leonard Cohen

“Hey Joe” by Medeski, Martin and Wood

“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake

“Comptine D’un Autre Ete: L’Apres Midi” by Yann Tiersen

In your dream tonight, someone you love will hold your hand.

A Montage of Tattoos

July 22, 2009

…of The Little Prince.

literay-tattoo-the-little-princelittleprincetatThe little prince tattoosnaketatanotherprinceThe last one is my favorite.  Looking at pictures of tattoos makes me want another one.  Not that that should be surprising…

Scary Dispatch from Eastern Europe

July 21, 2009

My friend T lives in Lithuania (the reason for my visit there back in April) and he sent me this, to be disseminated amongst the more “aware” populations:

“OH! I was about to finish there, but realized I had an experience that I PROMISED to pass on to the civilized world. So I was talking to this Lithuanian woman, and she was criticizing the midwest – I was fine with it – she would fit right in over there. Anyway, she said something about how Americans are “racist” and I replied that it was certainly still a problem, but its easy for people like Lithuanians to make such accusations when their is absolutely no racial diversity in their country. I continued to point out that Lithuanian treatment of Jews and gays is pretty indicative of its overall low level of tolerance. She looked at me sternly and said – “well . . . I AGREE with that behavior.” I stood there dumbfounded momentarily, mostly just trying to understand how I ended up talking to someone so stupid. She continued on to tell me about how “the gays” have a secret manifesto and they plan on enslaving women and cloning only men (which means the female slaves would die off – seems like a waste – but i kept that to myself). Furthermore, according to my source, this plan was very realistic, because “everyone knows” how rich and influential “the gays” are . . . and how they have “infiltrated” the American government. I began laughing, because, well, how else do you react to something like that? But I have to say that part of me was petrified of the ignorance and self-assuredness in this woman’s speech. She clearly isn’t the only person with such views, and none of the Lithuanians standing around me shared my complete disgust (they didn’t defend her, but still seemed to be mulling over the discussion as if it were an interesting and complex debate – instead of one person spewing filth and the other trying desperately to digest what was being said without exploding). I eventually was able to control myself and told her that I can’t wait to tell my friends back home about her theory. Done and done. “

Bloggin’ (to the tune of “Truckin'”)

July 21, 2009

My father is a Libertarian, and he reads a lot of Reason magazine. When I told him I was blogging, and slightly ashamed of it, he sent me a link to an article about a new book called Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg, one of the founders of Salon. Link is below the excerpt.

Reason: Near the end of the book, you describe bloggers as the “curators of our collective history.”

Rosenberg: In the future, when people write the history of our time, they’re going to have this incredible trove of information. It’s not totally raw, but it is much broader than the material historians have had to work with in the past. It encompasses a much wider swath of humanity. I can’t help thinking of that as a monumental achievement.

http://www.reason.com/news/show/134784.html

Image Craving

July 20, 2009
Brigitte Bardot.  Is pretty.

Brigitte Bardot. Is pretty.

My boss makes me hate words. So…here is Brigitte Bardot.

“When I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol.”

July 20, 2009

So I have this thing about cults, especially ones that incorporate group chanting/dancing to their worship repertoire (this is kind of all of them.) My unprofessional opinion (I’m an unlicensed, practicing therapist) is that this is because I grew up in a decidedly dogma-free household and community, and now crave restrictions, belief systems forced on me, and community-wide demonstrations of religious ecstasy.

I also like revolutions because, well, let’s face it, who doesn’t love a good revolution?

And world music.

So all these things kind of come together in this movie The Dancer Upstairs, directed by John Malkovich (him, too, I like) and released in 2002. The movie wasn’t critically lauded but I found it quite compelling. It takes place in some hypothetical, EveryCity, Latin America, and is centered around a detective, portrayed by Javier Bardem, as he tries to track down the leader of an ephemeral revolutionary party named Presidente Ezekiel. Ezekiel likes to quote communist philosophers and Kant and Nazi politician Hermann Wilhelm Goring (responsible for the title), and is also a fan of guerrilla and terrorist warfare, including suicide bombings and dog slaughterings. Bitchin’.

IMDB says…

The story is inspired by the Maoist insurgency in Peru known as the Shining Path. Its leader Abimael Guzmán, who was known by the nom de guerre President Gonzalo, was captured in an apartment above a ballet studio in the capital Lima in 1992. The ballet teacher Yolanda was based on Maritza Garrido Lecca, the woman in whose apartment Guzmán was found. Bardem’s character was inspired by Benedicto Jimenez and General Antonio Ketin Vidal, the leading figures responsible for Guzmán’s capture.

So there are a lot of things I really like about the movie, one being that everything is so misty and unclear the whole time. There are sinister forces at work in this provincial Latin American capital, invisible wires buzzing all the time, sending out Maoist aphorisms, creating secret societal connections, developing plots. I’m sort of the opposite of many movie goers, I think, in that I prefer not to be spoon fed everything; I appreciate a little mystery, even at the end of the day. I savor discomfort, I guess. Your every day cinematic masochist. In this movie, things are teased out well, but the majority of the action, at first, is shrouded in darkness and lit only by fireworks (the guerrilla group is fond of turning off the city’s power and then setting off fireworks), and I find it really interesting.

Any way, at one point Detective Rejas (Bardem) and another detective find a tape that a devotee is leaving for Ezekiel in a pre-determined drop off location. They intercept the drop off, grab the tape and examine it. It seems to be innocuous, until during the credits, the screen flickers (like the film has been cut) and it cuts to a party of people dancing joyously to a song that I have been TRYING to track down for ages. There’s a group clapping part, so I was SOLD! Once I found the name of it, I had to find an MP3 online, and now I pass it along to you. Enjoy yourself some Egyptian hoopla. Fuck Monday. Start a revolution.

http://sudairy.com//music/audio/awedouny.mp3

It could be worse…

July 20, 2009

You could be Mischa Barton.

An Underrated Movie

July 20, 2009

There is a Kicking and Screaming other than the awful Will Ferrell one. It was directed by Noah Baumbach, who later directed The Squid and the Whale and Margot at the Wedding, and released in 1995, and is probably one of the most quotable post-collegiate malaise movies ever. (Surprisingly a large category!)

“How can you be nostalgic? We only graduated four months ago.”

“I’m nostalgic for conversations I had yesterday. I’ve begun reminiscing events before they even happen. I’m reminiscing this right now. I can’t go to the bar because I’ve already been there in my mind, and I didn’t have a good time.”

Question: is there a word that means, “To do something specifically for its value as a memory”? If not, there should be.