wkw

Check it out! I think I'm going to faint:
http://www.cinematical.com/2008/03/14/wong-kar-wai-in-soho/

Outlaws in Pajamas

Eastwood wakes to the sound of pan pipes. He looks around....

Just tonight, I think maybe, For a Few Dollars More might be inching its way ahead of The Good, The Bad & The Ugly. I mean, come on, it has Klaus Kinski in it. More twitching per second than has ever been captured on film before or since. It has also the toothless, rubber-lower-jaw old guy who is always, always a railridin' hobo, here playing an old-timer who's against trains. It has the world's most excellent (what do you call it?) footprint-off/bitch-slap combo. It has Eastwood, the tramp, shamelessly courting both Angel Eyes and Indio. And it has that eternal cigarillo, resourcefulness, manliness, a shield, just long enough to fit beneath the brim of his hat when it rains - a quality I love beyond reason and that, I admit, I may have mentioned before.

Anyhow. The first time I saw this film was during the Grindhouse Film Fest in Portland - sitting by the inimitable Sam Dodge Soule III - and his pal Dicky Dahl, whose name appears in the editing credits on the new Gus Van Sant film, Paranoid Park, about which more later - and when I saw it then, the film was HUGE but very, very pink. Smelled of vinegar at fifty paces. Not terribly macho I guess, but that kind of pink is easy to overlook once you get into it, and considering the grindhouseyness of it all.

Well, I don't know which I like better, when you get down to it. Still got a crush on Eli Wallach (the Ugly), but Indio is so sexy...and he's almost as hot in A Fistful of Dollars, which is pretty sweet but lacks the balls-out, fists-in-the-air glory of the second film, in my opinion.

Listen, mister, why'd you choose my place to commit suicide?

Even the Bank of San Francisco isn't that well protected!

I was worried about you. All alone, with ... so many problems to solve ....

Toupary

I am no longer in a bad mood.

Tonight I spent a couple of hours in the company of this guy:

(skip ahead to the 2-minute mark if it's boring to see him all shirtless)



Yep. Went to a screening of director Christophe Honore's new flim, Love Songs, and both the director and his main muse were there. I wanted to see the film anyway, because I really liked Dans Paris, the only other movie I've seen by Honore. Both movies are sort of eccentrically romantic, and sad, and weird, and of course extremely pretty to look at. Best of all, they're musicals. A lot of the dialogue comes across in these sweet, mumbly, nonchalant little songs, and something about the silliness of it (and, admittedly, the fact that everything sounds good in French) rescues all the precarious moments from ever seeming overwrought. So, as I said, I wanted to see the film anyway. But I also wanted to see Louis Garrel, because I wanted to find out if it's really possible for someone to look like that. And I'm sorry to report that it is. Alas. I'm ruined for life.

(He was also funny; during Q&A he referred to himself as a sex toy, and when some girl in the audience asked him, incredibly, to "sing for us," he amended his earlier statement to sex toy and marionette.) (But he sang anyway. Badly, on purpose.)

On a side note, I've decided that the French have to be beautiful, because otherwise they'd be invisible against a city like Paris. Man, that town looks good in anything.

The Parts Left Out of the Seattle Book, pt I

I'm in a lousy mood today, for some reason. Not that it matters.

The newest edition of the Seattle guidebook hit shelves recently, I'm told (haven't seen it yet, can't be blamed, folks, especially not for any mistakes you might find while say casually flipping through the color map section for example, not that you'll find any mind you), and it includes a nifty new feature: "Local Voices." Interviews with people who actually live in the city the guide is about. Yep. Some of mine didn't make the cut -- too dull for the Mid-Life Global Nomad demographic, I reckon. Bit flimsy on the service-journalism angle, too -- where to shop and eat and so forth. No, that's mean; really they just re-did the page count, and some of my intarviews didn't fit. Anyway. Here is one. Technically it's owned by LP, since I sold it to them for cash money, but I don't think they'll mind if the four of you who read this blog get a look at it. Enjoy:

Teh Lord Teh, IT consultant

A mild-mannered tech consultant by day, the young computer genius and weapons collector known as Teh Lr0d Teh represents Seattle's fringe culture. He hangs out at Teh Wetspot (www.wetspot.org), a BDSM community center in Lower Queen Anne. He is also a compelling argument in the case against the stressful, mind-degrading nature of work in the tech industry.

This interview was conducted entirely online. Please excuse the prelude:

'i hear lonely plan8 iz totally luztig 4 j00r bl00t. if tehy dont tap teh l33t-language audience they will go out of business. so you must turn to l-r0d t3h 2 save teh publih8ion. have you written anything about teh prevalence of kink sess in seattlul? note to teh editors: PH33R MEIN WRATH.'

What do you do for a living? I’m starting a Megacorporation/Nonprofit/lulz gorganization called 1-800-GOT-MEAT. We collect roadkill and donate it to local hick bigots for only a nominal cost. I get to play with meat all day and watch hicks salivate at gore. And I get to help the children - always my primary motivation in lyfe.

How long have you lived in Seattle? It depends on your definition of 'lived.' A week ago I thought to unleash the unifying power of roadkill, and since then I’ve felt exhilarated, overflowing with constant spiritual and erectile arousal. I’d say that I hadn’t really lived since then. So, a week.

What neighborhood do you live in? i just moved 2 seattlul proper (i live on teh wetspot'z bondage bed)

What's the best thing about your neighborhood? An overabundance of Ewok meat

How has the city changed since you moved there, and what do you think it will be like in five years? There were less Slaytanic cults when I moved here in 2000 BCE, but now they openly lust for blood. This is good for business, and my capital coffers have been overflowing. In 5 years I predict that ALL LIFE ENDS.

Any tourist traps that are worthwhile? There are several traps in my backyard that would work on tourists just fine. And if by worthwhile you mean beneficial for the children, then yes.

Dylan Ropes a Wild Turkey

No, that's not some kind of advanced yoga move; it's a scene from the coolest movie I've seen recently, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. It came out when I was 2 and James Coburn was hot and Kris Kristofferson had chubby little baby cheeks, believe it or not. Sam Peckinpah directed it, so death pervades, of course, as well as rivers of blood in a color I like to call Raimi red. Bob Dylan did the soundtrack, and he plays a shifty, knife-wielding outlaw pup who calls himself Alias.


It's a story about getting old and going straight, selling out to the Man and feeling crappy about it but doing it anyway because the world is moving on and you're too worn out to keep fighting. Salty old gunslinger Pat Garrett takes a job as sheriff, and the first thing he has to do -- the thing they hired him for -- is to bring down his pal Billy the Kid. The whole movie's a vast, gorgeous, gritty, epic love poem to the crumbling myths and disappearing rawness of the west; if you don't believe me try watching Slim Pickens' slow, gutshot walk to die at creekside without getting choked up.

It also has one of the best mini-odes to a willing dame ever grunted by a greasy barkeep:
"She got a ass on her ... like a forty dollar cow ... and a tit ... I'd like to see that thing filled with tequila."

Like I said. Poetry.




Moving on...

Pet peeves for today:

I hate it when people say things like "one of our finest novelists," or "among our best young actors," as if they are part of some mysterious corporation that owns the talent and creativity of artistic types. Annoying.

John Graham hates it when, every time someone looks through binoculars in the movies or on TV, the edges of the screen are blacked in to form the shape of two conjoined circles, like the eyeholes in a pair of binoculars. Think about it. When you look through binoculars, do you see the view in two conjoined circles? No, you don't. Through the magic of technology, you see it just as you would without the binocs, only closer. Amazing! (I'm watching the Oscars right now and a goofy little montage just reminded me of that.)

Also, straight from the supermarket checkout-line tabloids: I hereby ban the suddenly ubiquitous and totally barfy use of the term "bump" for preggy bellies. So disgusting.

Speaking of checkout-line tabloids, another outrage:
Here's the cover of the Feb 21 issue of Rolling Stone. Headline: "Britney Spears: Inside an American Tragedy." Hmm. Is Britney tragic, really?

And then, in tiny print over to the side, stuck between SHERYL CROW and ZEP TOUR UPDATE: "Heath Ledger." Yes...ever so much less tragic a loss than Britney's pop starlet career. (I mean, I know it's a music magazine, but still.)

Well, getting back to the realm of the indisputable: A very smart fellow recently gave me a list of Dylan songs I need to get in order to further my enlightenment. Now I know this may sound crazy, but I'm told you can "download" songs of music from the World Wide Web these days. Can this be true? I've had no luck with it so far. If any of you clever young people out there can tell me how to do it, I'd be much obliged.

misc

Heard on the television yesterday:
"Ask your doctor if your heart is healthy enough for sex." I think that's good advice.

Today somehow I cut myself on the lid of a travel mug. See? I am fragile. I only seem tough.

This is old, but I love it (and it's relevant, in a way: cows, death). The website, Artliberated.org, is sort of a watchdog group defending art against the prudes of Scandinavia. It hasn't been doing much lately, though. Here's another pretty old case, probably only funny if you've seen the ubiquitous Kosta Boda glassware cramming every souvenir shop in Sweden and distributed equally among all citizens whether they like it or not. Fair's fair.

More later,

On the other hand...

There are two things I love about Valentine's Day:

Margo and my grandma. :)

OK, three things: Mom, too.

Thanks, guys!

VD Special

I've always hated Valentine's Day, but until last year I never had a legitimate reason. Now that I do (thank you, former teenage boyfriend, who ditched me that night to seduce someone cooler, and even borrowed my camera to blog about it afterwards!), I can enjoy hating it unreservedly. For many years I marked the holiday with a bottle of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine, because like Valentine's Day it was fake, cheap, pink, vile, bad-smelling and would rot your guts out. I am far too old for that now, and besides, the shop on the corner didn't have any. So this year I'm eating ramen (pink packet) and an apple (Pink Lady) while fantasizing about the long-dead PDX writer John Reed (pinko!). So far, so good.


Friday night was much worse. I watched a DVD (for research - swear), and when I ejected the disc, Bridget Jones's Diary was on TV. (The dorm dads hooked up my cable while I was away for Xmas, which required them to move the TV clear across the room and string up an elaborate series of wires, so I guess they mean it.) A more spineful person might've turned off the television and continued with her studies, but not me. I was sucked in. Bridget Jones. Too sick-making. Worst of all, it was the kind of all-American TV station that interrupts its movies with commercial breaks. Following are the types of products advertised on a Friday night to people watching Bridget Jones's Diary:

• champagne
• designer perfume
• yeast-infection goo
• vaginal lubricant
• Doritos.

Okay, TV people. Here is a tip I will give to you free of charge. Women who are at home at 10pm on a Friday night watching Bridget Jones's Diary do not as a rule need vaginal lubricant. Not unless it comes in one of those fancy holiday gift packs with various interesting accessories.

The champagne is fine, of course, although if you really want to know, whiskey would be better. As for the Doritos, well, yes, obviously.

More of Becky's homework

I have a lot of homework to do tonight. So, by way of stalling, and to appease the slavering hordes of dedicated readers and fans (hi Karl!), here's a record review I did awhile back. It's about Richmond Fontaine. (Gasps of amazed disbelief from the audience.) Hush, you. Anyway, I think I've reverted, since writing this, to having The Fitzgerald be my favorite RF album -- but I still really love that mariachi song at the end of 13 Cities. The whole thing is great, really.

Also, for my legions of fans in the UK, Willy's new novel is out: it's called Northline, also the name of an early song he wrote, and the girl in it, Alison Johnson, is the name of another song he wrote. And there's a video, I just found:



Anyhow. Read on, legions of fans, and buy the record or the book or even both. You won't regret it.

Richmond Fontaine
13 Cities

Say you're hitchhiking. It's hot. You've been thumbing rides all day and not a bite. You're about to give up and throw yourself across the yellow line when an old guy in a pickup stops. You get in. He cracks you a beer, says "Relax, kid, let me tell you a story." He doesn't ask where you're going; he knows it doesn't matter. He tells you a story. When your beer's done, he hands you a fresh one. The story gets a little better, a little sadder.

That's how it feels to come home at the end of the day and put on Richmond Fontaine's 13 Cities. Somehow the record comforts and relieves you even if you don't have any beer. Maybe it's because things aren't ever likely to get as bad for you as they are for the people Willy Vlautin writes about. RF's singer-songwriter is a master of the sad portrait. The band's 2005 album, The Fitzgerald, featured Vlautin essentially alone with a guitar, telling quiet stories in his humble way, with the ragged voice of an old barfly and the intonation of a 6-year-old. On The Fitzgerald most of the stories end badly. It's a beautiful album, but no comfort to a fragile soul.

13 Cities is not so brutally sparse and grim. That's not to say it's cheerful. With one exception, Vlautin's songs are as melancholy as ever; but this time he's not alone with his sadness. The band—Vlautin (guitars, vocals), Sean Oldham (drums, vocals), Dave Harding (bass), Dan Eccles (guitars) and Paul Brainard (pedal steel, piano)—recorded this album in Arizona with the Tucson band Calexico. The expanded cast of musicians lightens the mood considerably. All the joy on the record comes from the music, which provides on most of the songs a heartening counterbalance to the vocals.

The record opens with "Moving Back Home #2," announced by a Mexicali-style trumpet flourish. It's a fast-paced tune; the drums push it along, and it sounds happy, at least until you catch what Vlautin is singing: "I'm living in my mom's basement again / I come in at 4 am / She gets pissed / Gotta be up at 6 / We get into a fight / So I go out again." For a different band, the juxtaposition of a jaunty tune with lyrics about a hopeless loser who gambles all night might be ironic. But Richmond Fontaine is never ironic. It's just that Vlautin can laugh at himself, or his former self, and at the mistakes he's made and keeps making.

But he doesn't laugh at the other characters who stumble through his songs: toward them he is always kind. Vlautin's people are gamblers, drunks and wrecks, immobilized by circumstance or crushed by the weight of bad luck. But they're not bad people, and the songwriter holds out hope for them. He leaves an escape hatch, a way to imagine that, if things go right, maybe one day the people he's singing about will be better off. But it won't be easy.

In the slow, shuffling third track, "$87 and a Guilty Conscience That Gets Worse the Longer I Go," the narrator turns his back on a friend who's holed up in a motel room with an underage hitchhiker. To rescue the girl, he calls the police, then feels terrible for betraying his friend. Nobility is seldom noticed or rewarded in a Vlautin song. Another example is the harmonica-laced ballad, "Fell Into Painting Houses in Phoenix, Arizona," about a young house painter whose crew picks up a Mexican day-laborer: "We worked five days straight, then we didn't pick him up / and I knew that the kid had never been paid... I didn't show up the next day / I ain't shit, but I ain't that way." The claustrophobia in the song has nothing to do with physical space: though wide horizons stretch all around him, the music closes in and the narrator repeats through clenched teeth, "Get me outta here, get me out get me out of here."

Relief comes in the instrumental interludes, like "El Tiradito," a relaxed and sprawling breather that lets the desert scenery roll gently by in your mind. Then its steady ka-thunk eases into the ominous next track, "A Ghost I Became," about a guy so disenchanted he vanishes into the landscape.

Near the end there's a break in the gloom. "Four Walls" is a tiny moment of pure romantic exuberance that reveals all the previous sorrows as mere artifacts of passing bad luck. We don't need anything, the singer tells his girl; nothing bad can find us here. "We'll just lay around," he says, and the guitar tones rise up like church bells. "And our hearts will sing," and the bells ring faster, louder, until at the peak of their clamor he finishes the sentence, "like mariachis" -- and it's like church just let out.

Granted, the album ends on its saddest note, with "Lost in the World," but by then you already know—the band has already told you—that things might turn out OK after all.

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2007, so far

Here's another thing that grosses me out: the use of the word "skin" to describe things like cell-phone covers or the background of a MySpace page. Bit too Cronenbergian for me. I love Cronenberg, but I never, ever want to touch anything that's been in any of his movies, Viggo Mortensen excepted.

Last night I went to a fancy art museum and saw this crazy Syrian movie (free! because I am a student-level patron of the arts) called Sacrifices that made me want to call in Samuel L Jackson and have him do his famous Pulp Fiction number. The recurring "punch line" in the film is that someone says, "What?" and the person they're talking to says, "What 'what'?" Over and over; it's like 90 percent of the dialogue. After a while, even though the movie was very beautiful and strange, the what-saying got on my nerves. I was like,



Anyway. Everyone else on earth has been doing top-10 movie lists, but I can't be bothered to narrow it down that much. Internet space is infinite. So here are the 2007-release films that I actually saw in 2007 and liked, vaguely in order but not strictly so. I'm not writing much about any of them because other people have done so a lot better than I could, but arguments are of course encouraged.

• Lust, Caution -- starring my only real boyfriend (sorry, Brando; sorry, Hutz), Tony Leung Chiu Wai (the pic is from In the Mood for Love, though; and probably it's really Wong Kar-wai who's my boyfriend after all; when I die and my life flashes before my eyes, I hope it turns out he directed it).

• No Country for Old Men
• The Host
• Children of Men
• Grindhouse -- I liked the Rodriguez half (Planet Terror) a lot better than the Tarantino half (Death Proof), but maybe because I haven't seen the longer version of Death Proof; it supposedly rules. Even the shortened version was pretty sweet, and holy hooch, Kurt Russell! Yow. But the girls' conversations I thought were draggy and inane (unusual for QT). Allegedly the timing is better in the longer version; there are pauses, etc.
• Margot at the Wedding
• Sweeney Todd -- I want to be in a Johnny Depp/Helena Bonham Carter sandwich. Mrs Lovett's dream scene of a happy goth picnic on the beach is my favorite part, esp when his hand creeps over to her knee for a second, then hastily retreats. So sad. But at least he tried.
• The Darjeeling Limited -- Watching Owen Wilson unbandage his face in the mirror as his brothers look on is excruciating. It's audible. Gross. That whole scene is a weird combination of suspenseful, tender and scary; the rest of the movie is so perfect and beautiful, and suddenly they're peeling the facade away, just for a second, and you get a peek at this poor wounded naked thing and it's just heartbreaking. Well, I thought so anyway.
• The Lives of Others
• Romance & Cigarettes -- Kate Winslett is the coolest dame. I've loved her since she peed in the desert with Harvey Keitel all those years ago. She goes all out in this one, too.
• Dans Paris -- no living boy should be allowed to be so cute, not even a French one. It's just ridiculous.
• Lars & the Real Girl
• 10 Canoes
• Paprika -- I really liked the scary dream music in this.
• Rescue Dawn
• Avenue Montaigne
• Waitress -- the best of the oops-I'm-pregnant movies.
• Helvetica
• Charlie Wilson's War -- Have read a bunch of negative reviews of this, so I'll concede that I might've liked it mainly because I saw it on my most-fun vacation day in Portland, palling around with Bradford. Motorcycles, lunch, weaponry, beer, then a matinee -- it's possible my judgment was clouded, but at the time I thought this movie was a lot of fun.
• This Is England -- tiny skinheads! So cute.
• Juno -- I think they actually speak leet in here once or twice.
• Knocked Up
• Red Road
• Shoot 'Em Up
• 28 Weeks Later - there went my crush on Robert Carlyle.
• Night of Lust -- dug up out of the California soil by Seth & his Simple Farm Boy, screened in NYC at the Pioneer Theater. Ancient pulp-crime story spliced together with utterly non sequitur closeups of French boobies. Everyone but me and two icky dudes walked out twenty minutes into it, but that's okay.
• Day Watch -- not as good as Night Watch.
• The Golden Compass -- I know, I know. Everyone hated it. It's probably terrible. But I went on a night when I was desperate for sparkly escapism, and it did what I needed it to do. Also made me kind of want to read the books, for what it's worth.

Here are the movies I didn't like:

• Death at a Funeral (I don't think anybody else saw this)
• Into the Wild (just calm down, alright Eddie Vedder? Jesus.)
• Jindabyne
• Mystic Ball (death to hippies)
• The Jane Austen Book Club (icky-sticky girl stuff, but not that hideous until the last 30 seconds, when to my surprise it turns into a bodysnatcher-zombie film)

I've also missed a lot of movies I should've seen, including Eastern Promises. Still haven't made it to I'm Not There, or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, or There Will Be Blood. (Maybe today!) Last year, when I was freelancing at Willamette Week, I saw 74 movies (not counting older stuff and things I watched at home or at the beer theater). (Oh how I miss the beer theater.) My favorites from 2006, since nobody asked, include The Science of Sleep; Don't Come Knocking; Russian Dolls; Kekexili: Mountain Patrol; and Night Watch.

And as long as we're in a reflective mood, here are some memorable live shows I saw in 2007:

• Shock Troops (Cocksparrer tribute band, feat. the former teenage boyfriend on guitar, and he looked right at me during "Teenage Heart"), Ash Street, Jan 13
• The Shotgun (sadly disbanded), Tonic Lounge, Jan 17
• Hunches & Black Lips at Dante's, Jan 18
• Daniel Menche (astounding!) at Doug Fir, Jan 21
• Tragedy & Defect Defect in Gresham, Jan 27
• Polysics, Dante's, Jan 28
• Dagger of the Mind (first glimpse of the teenager's Shakespearean power-metal band-- also known as that time Becky fought the hooker on the kitchen floor), Simmhut, Feb 9
• 2 Ton Boa at Rotture, March 2
• Dagger of the Mind at Monkey Pub March 24 & Wetspot (teenager gets his naked butt whipped, likes it) March 25, Seattle
• DJ Dieselboy, on a boat, Hudson River, NYC, Sept 2
• Marcellus Hall, Lakeside Lounge, NYC, Dec 8 (see below)

As for books, lots of what I read from 2007 were comix. Some good ones:

• Tekkonkinkreet: Black & White by Taiyo Matsumoto
• Shortcomings, by Adrian Tomine
• The Salon, Nick Bertozzi

In the fiction category, the winner was of course Willy Vlautin's novel The Motel Life. And I really want to read the new Junot Diaz book; his short stories are excellent.

I am now officially tired of thinking, despite this being a remarkably shallow, analysis-free glob post; also I have to go finish a graphic-novels review that's due tomorrow.
So long.

What'll it be?

I couldn't sleep last night, and the reason for it made me remember why I started this glob way back when. Given that the world might kill me at any time in any number of boring ways (cancer, traffic accidents, heart disease), I thought it would be fun to court the weirdest and least likely methods of passive self-destruction. It makes me feel better about the ways in which I'm actively self-destructive: motorcycle racing, for example. (I mean, if I've already been infected by the mad cow virus, which I might be, perhaps via contaminated contact-lens solution, which can happen, by the way, I read about it on the Internet, then why not go ahead and take some risks, seeing as how I'm doomed already?) The best part is the suspense: incubation periods on some of these things are immense.

Anyway, lately I've been certain that the radiator in the room above my room is going to come crashing through the floor/ceiling and crush my head while I sleep. This is unlikely. But no part of the building strikes me as being terrifically sturdy. And my radiator struggles daily to unbolt itself and walk across the room; I have to assume the other radiators feel the same way. If it does happen, it'll be a nice echo of one of my favorite books from childhood, Flat Stanley.

I'm also terrified of/fascinated by deep vein thrombosis. The words alone: deep vein thrombosis. I fly a lot, and every time I'm on an airplane, if I can't fall asleep, I spend the whole time with the ominous voice of a cheap TV announcer in my head making echoey pronouncements about deep vein thrombosis. Days later I worry that I picked it up on the plane and any second now it'll drop me.

Fun girl!

Over Christmas break I got some information from my dad about food poisoning. That's another good one. Who hasn't had a little bout of food poisoning, right? You barf your lungs out, crap your guts out, think you're at death's door, and then you get better. Usually the only lasting effect is that you never eat at that restaurant again. However! Did you know that sometimes, the food-poisoning bug sticks around, lurking in there somewhere, unnoticed for decades? It's true -- it's even in a story by the Associated Press, which I would quote for you except that doing so violates copyright laws, probably. Anyway, the AP says scientists have found links between E. coli and kidney failure, salmonella and arthritis, and campylobacter and a "mysterious paralysis" 10 to 20 years after an episode of food poisoning.

That's right: paralysis. Exciting, isn't it?

Campylobacter, by the way, is the most frequently diagnosed form of food poisoning, infecting up to 4 million people a year. Of course not all 4 million of them will end up mysteriously paralyzed 20 years later. It's a gamble. Unfortunately, my research has failed to determine whether the odds are better or worse than those for mad cow, bird flu etc. We'll just have to wait a few decades and see how it turns out.

Not that I think this is really a fair comparison, but only about 88,000 people were injured in motorcycle accidents in 2006. Most of them were also not paralyzed. The main difference here is that one group is going to have to explain that what happened was they ate a chicken sandwich.

How cool is that?

Travis Bickle's mohawk is a wig!

It's true - I've seen it with my own eyes, a little stripe of fur in a glass case along the wall, right next to the denture-looking chunks of plastic Marlon Brando wore inside his face for The Godfather. Just a few of the many revelations this past weekend at the excellent Museum of the Moving Image. (Looking for the link just now I see that George Romero Himself will be there in February. Sweet.) I was surprised and a little disappointed to learn that Method Acting doesn't include hair and teeth. I mean, jeez, DeNiro, I thought you were supposed to be committed.


Brenda drove in from Boston on Thursday night. I met her at the New Museum.... Admission is free on Thursdays, and it's a good thing, too; the knowledge that I'd given them no money was all that kept me from spontaneously combusting out of sheer annoyance. Exhibits included a crumpled-up plastic bag on the floor; pieces of cardboard glued together into the shapes of houses and painted white; and a pile of thrift-store clothes we weren't even allowed to try on.

Maybe I was just in a bad mood. I'd had a cold all week. To be fair, the bookstore is outstanding.

We consoled ourselves with cheap falafel and a trudge through the rainy streets in search of entertainment. And guess who we saw? No kidding: Marcellus Hall! Right there on the street corner. But I didn't notice him until too late, and besides he was surrounded by girls, so I just swooned internally a little bit and kept on walking. We found the Bulgarian disco, where Eugene Hutz (my boyfriend) of Gogol Bordello sometimes DJs on Thursday nights, but it was too early, so instead we went into the Cake Shop because it looked warm. The Cake Shop is a cake shop but also a microscopic record store and occasional indie-rock venue. I got a hot toddy in the World's Largest Coffee Mug, and Brenda got a slab of cake the size of a minivan. The guy next to me kept staring at the cake; later he told me he had quit smoking three days earlier. Maybe that explains it.

We flipped through the CDs (you remember those); they had a copy of the Starvations for three bucks, but I already own it. Then we went back to Mehanata, the Bulgarian bar, but Hutz was not there. It was hilarious anyway. I love watching people dance. It reinforces the wisdom of my policy never to do so myself (barring extraordinary circumstances and/or tequila).

Next day we drove out to Queens and dug the Museum of the Moving Image, which restored my faith in museums (though shook it a little in the acting department). It was fun to be driven around. We ate lunch in Jackson Heights, at the famed Jackson Diner, an Indian buffet. Jackson Heights is basically fifteen ethnic neighborhoods crammed into two blocks. You can go from Ecuador to Bangladesh to Mexico in five seconds. The Jackson Heights Historic District (much bigger than two blocks) was a planned community starting around 1917; it's famous for its giant brick apartment buildings with fancy manicured private gardens. They look like the older dorms at Reed.

We explored a bit, then ditched the car back at my place and took the subway into Manhattan. Friday is pay-what-you-want at most of the museums, so we hit the ICP and the Whitney, both pretty good. The big draw at the Whitney was the Kara Walker retrospective, and it justified the hype. The mood in the museum was all very serious, and you weren't allowed to laugh even at the parts that were funny. Back in Brooklyn Heights we met Brenda's friend Amy and went to a place that had -- believe it! -- Rogue Chocolate Stout on tap.

I spent the rest of the weekend reading comix for a review due this week and finishing John Reed's book on the Russian Revolution. School started Tuesday. And here we are.

A Mystery Solved, A Grudge Relinquished

Some of you know about my many ridiculous grammar-based hangups: peeves too petty to explain, futile boycotts, anonymous edits scribbled in anger on innocent restaurant menus. Well, as of Sunday morning, I have one less such hangup. The Sunday Times contained an obituary for Carl N. Karcher, 90, founder of Carl's Jr Hamburger Chain. Carl's Jr, I'm now ashamed to admit, topped my list of hated restaurants not because of its infamous six-dollar burger ($4.19 when it first came out) but because of that irritating and (I thought) just plain wrong apostrophe in its name. Operating on the principle that nobody knows how to use an apostrophe, I figured there was a guy named Carl Jr who owned the restaurant but couldn't be bothered to hire a copy editor. Wrong! Here's the key paragraph from the obit:

"He opened the first Carl's Jr -- named 'Jr.' to distinguish it from his full-service eatery -- in 1956."

Damn. Good old Carl! I take back all those awful things I said about you, buddy. RIP.

Becky

Can I Help Who's Next?

Done with school! Well, almost. For this semester. I have one paper left to hand in - it's due tomorrow, so obviously, no need to rush. I'm writing about polyamory, specifically as it has been interpreted by the young and hip: which is to say, vaguely. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as "the custom or practice of engaging in multiple sexual relationships with the knowledge and consent of all partners concerned," but most folks I've talked to tend to stop reading just before "with." Seems to be a handy way to avoid commitment and simultaneously get credit for brave experimentation in an unorthodox lifestyle. But it's an unwieldy subject for a news article, that's for sure. I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I was thinking the "characters" would be strange and entertaining, but ... so far, not really. Anyway, you won't be seeing this one posted online. But it will get done. It's practically done already. (I don't feel tardy...)

In other news...I'm taking suggestions for things I should do in the city before the onslaught begins again. Let me live vicariously through you! It's not just a blog, people: it's your blog. (Glob, I mean. Not blog.)

Well, actually it's my glob. And I do have a couple of mini-outings to share, but am too tired and poly-grossed-out to report them entertainingly tonight. For now, a highlight: I went to see Marcellus Hall play at the Lakeside Lounge last Saturday. He has a cool name and uses it well. I first saw him in his old band, Railroad Jerk, which played Satyricon in like 1947, and I went with Gordon because the band was on Matador, which at the time was good enough for us. They were great. (The sarcastic bio on the Matador site describes RRJ as industrial folk, or gangster folk, or a "unique blend of traditional Irish folk, mainstream r&b, classical jazz, reggae, delta blues, '60s psychedelia, European techno-pop, Appalachian hillbilly, California surf and post-punk industrial wall-of-noise grunge dirge." I would dispute the grunge and the reggae and possibly the Irish folk, but the rest is pretty dead-on.) Marcellus Hall at that time was a tall and skinny red-haired Adonis-type figure who played guitar and harmonica and did the splits on stage. A full-grown man. The splits! Without ever once cracking his cool facade, and yet also without being a smartass who was making fun of us and/or rock and roll. He was a fine thing, and his song lyrics were brilliant, literary, wicked little poser-seeking missiles. But what I liked best about him was his pronunciation.

I saw his next band, White Hassle, in Stockholm four or five years ago. White Hassle started when the two main guys from RRJ got kicked out of their rental house and forced to live in the vacant lot next door, using only scraps of tin and buckets of nails to live. (The first album, anyway, sounded like that. By the time I saw them they were back to being pretty suave.) They had a great song involving Sophia Loren and two pals getting shanghaied onto a cargo ship to serve under a tyrannical captain. And one about echinacea. After that show, I was having a beer with their guest guitarist and Marcellus Hall was watching a Swedish girl write something scribbly on the wall. "It's her dissertation," he said. I never talked to him, though; too shy.

Anyhow, as of last Saturday, he looks the same as always. His songs are maybe even better, and not only because they make fun of things like cell-phones and email. ("We'll be turning our phones off," he warned the crowd, "so if you try to text us during the show...") The drummer in the new band is called Jimmy the Hat. Even the way Marcellus Hall pronounces Jimmy the Hat is cool. I read a review that said he did the splits during the encore, but I must've looked away at the crucial moment. Or maybe that person was just being metaphorical, because verbally at least, MH always does the splits, plus somersaults, backbends, handstands, you name it, if it's a gymnastic contortion, one of the lines in one of his songs has resembled it. He won't sacrifice a word for a rhyme; he'll just stretch and scrunch all the other words in that verse into crazy shapes until two words that kind of rhyme line up. It's always funny and it never sounds forced, it just sounds like the way he talks. Or the way he probably would talk, if a person would ever actually go up and try to talk to him.

Well, hopefully no music writers are reading this, because it's one of the worst examples of music writing I've ever seen. Sad, sad. Marcellus Hall deserves better, but he's not going to get it, or anyway not tonight. I'm off - more soon. Down with polyamory!

Update!

When I am queen, I will also ban the expression "It is what it is."

Goals

When I am queen, I will ban umbrellas and Christmas music.

That is all.

Some updates

Thanksgiving break turned out to be a mean linguistic trick: they meant "break" as a verb. Five books and assorted news articles to read, three papers to write...hey, why not, we have all week! Not that I'm complaining, really. It is what I'm here for. I'd feel ripped off if I'd paid them all that money just to tell me I should relax and keep doing what I'm doing.

Anyway, constrained by homework I didn't go to Boston as planned, to hang out with PK and friends, which is a drag, because an email message earlier had indicated that all of the friends would be tall, intelligent men. It figures.

Instead I stayed here, did some writing, some reporting and some reading: two cheery little uplifting books about the beheading of journalist Daniel Pearl; one about the government-vs-academia battle over contemporary artists like Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe; the section on libel in the AP stylebook; and my favorite, "Work and Other Sins," by my next boyfriend, Charlie LeDuff. Until becoming a stay-at-home-dad recently, Charlie wrote for the New York Times; he used to hang out in bars, talk to people and write about them. Made it look easy. Also, in one of his press photos he has this outrageous pirate mustache, and you all know how I feel about those.

Speaking of Boston, below, finally, are some photos of my trip there awhile back. I went for the weekend, to hang out with my friend Brenda (see earlier post on the cocktail tour). To get there I paid fifteen bucks at the dodgy-looking "Fung Wah" ticket window and stood in what I hoped was the right line for the bus. I had expected the legendary Chinatown bus to be a rickety old death machine spewing poisonous fumes and filled with squawking chickens in bamboo crates. But no. It was your average tour bus. Halfway up it stopped at McDonald's. Sigh.

Boston is cool! I'd never been there before. The whole thing is a museum, and Brenda is the best tour guide ever. We started in Charlestown, all red brick and twisty little cobblestone streets, gaslights and everything. It's so cute it looks fake. At the top is the Bunker Hill Monument, marking the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the first big fight in the Revolutionary War. Paul Revere started his midnight ride from Charlestown. It's also home to the beginning of The Freedom Trail, but we drove back to Boston proper and picked up the Trail there instead. Shorter walk. The Freedom Trail is a red stripe painted onto the sidewalk (or bricked in, sometimes) for tourists to follow from one historic site to another. Neat idea! Ironically, not everything along the Freedom Trail is free, so we didn't go into all of the historic buildings, but we did use the public restroom in Fanouiel Hall. Which is pretty free.

The most important thing I learned in Boston, however, is that cider donuts are the best food on earth. Cider donuts!!! I'd never heard of them. Brenda took me to a farm stand for breakfast. I don't think we have quite the same things on the West Coast. Some of those U-pick joints on Sauvie Island are close, but the Boston ones are more established. AND have cider donuts. Fifty cents each, and they were still warm when the guy handed 'em over. (This was also the first real Boston accent I heard. Holy crap! They are hilarious!) Then we beelined for the hot cider, which was unlike any hot cider I've ever had before. Dad would've fainted. It was that good.

Predictably, we bought apples. And some coffee. And, I admit it, I got another cider donut on the way out.

On the advice of Rob via Patrick, we checked out Bukowski's Tavern, where on the menu board we saw that you could order Deep Fried Cheese Logs. I think if it had been an hour later, there's no way you could've dragged us out of there before we'd had a cheese log each. But sadly, we had just eaten lunch, and could only appreciate it in the abstract. But we'll be back. We did stop in and have a beer at Sullivan's Tap, another Rob/Patrick recommendation. I had a pint of Sully's Light. Seemed appropriate. It's a long skinny bar, kinda sporty. On the TV they were showing news footage from out in front of the bar, taken on a different day. Weird.

The weirdest moment of the entire weekend: we'd stumbled across a war protest while crossing Boston Common. Later, on the way to the library, we ran into it again. It was a pretty huge parade, and we stood for a while watching it go by, halfheartedly checking out dudes. Then, from the little mini-stage next to us, someone with a microphone who had been sort of droning on for a while said, "And now, let me welcome Desmond Tutu!" Brenda and I simultaneously: "WHAT?!" Yep, it was him, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in life, mere feet away. He seemed to be ten million years old, very small and by far the most adorable person among the hundreds of protesters we could see. He said a few words about Jews, which were (probably for the best) blurred by the bad microphone and the crazy wind, and then he did this little hopping dance on stage and yelled "PEEEEEEEEEEEEACE!" over and over.

We couldn't top that.

Next day we drove through Lexington and Concord, saw the homes of Louisa Mae Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson (my boyfriend), and Nathaniel Hawthorne (Brenda's boyfriend -- or is she more into Thoreau? I forget). We stopped at another farm stand and got supplies for a picnic, which we had on the banks of Walden Pond (actual Walden Pond! pretty cool). The weather was gorgeous, so we walked around the pond (more of a lake). Two different women were swimming in Walden Pond. This was October, late October. Although the weather was gorgeous, it was not swimming weather. One of the women had on a wetsuit; the other seemed to be German or Nordic, based on her accent. Tough broad.

Other things of note: all the important stuff during the revolution took place at taverns. I'm not saying that's how it should be; I'm just telling you, that's how it was. Also, Brenda pointed out this one house along the battle route - the owners had redone the siding, but they'd had to leave a diamond-shaped hole in the new yellow siding, because way back when, a stray bullet from someone's revolutionary weapon had lodged itself there in the side of their house and was now a historic item that could not be messed with. (I'm paraphrasing.) So there you are. That's what it's like, living amid history, right there where it all went down.

Anyway, it was an excellent trip and I can't wait to get back there. Boston is really pretty and seems like a fun little place to hang out. Here are some pics; I'll put more up on flickr or something and add the link later. Too tech-challenged to do it now.

Brenda took this one: it's the street John Kerry lives on!

The Freedom Trail.

Walden Pond...

Replicas of Thoreau and his Hut.

Cliche but true: the autumn leaves out here are mighty pretty. I was a little early to catch them in their full glory (or rather, they were a little late), but it was still almost ridiculously autumnal.

Pic for JG

In case I never emailed it...

My 'Hood

Belated pics of the Boston trip will be up soon, but for now, here's one of a pretty corner in my neighborhood. The whole area looks like this! Especially in the fall. A girl could die of cuteness.