Sigh - Does it have subtitles?

A tale of Distributors, Foreign Film and Sophia Loren's boobies in this article in Salon... While there are worse power struggles in the world, I think we should all realize how much power distributors hold...
It still amazes me that people can't get past the FORIEGN = OTHER = BAD paradigm. How frekkin 1950's can you be, Jack Valenti???
I recall meeting the director Alex Cox and how he explained how he got railroaded by the distributors for his film Highway Patrolman. Because it was a) entirely in Spanish b) filmed with unknowns and c) took place in Mexico (all of this a decade before Amores Perros finally broke the barrier)...
However - maybe distributors are just the voice of the complacent middle American public - the megaplex goers who think Soderbergh is difficult. Another amusing anecdote relayed by a coworker who lived in nameless-southern state: apparently, mainstream theaters had to publish in bold print that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon does contain subtitles and you will be required to read".
While we continue to hold onto our prejudices, I can only feel bad for poor Sophia who bared it all... (she looks great, btw!)

"In many ways, we are viewed as the rich guy living on the hill"

Hmmm... Interesting, this article.
I can't help but think this something that is always felt by someone at a party, but you're not quite sure -- am I uncouth, uncultured, loud, bourgoise? Or am I indeed adored? America and it's vanities... I think we're always asking people from other countries what they think of us. We know our limits, but we also know our compassion... but we never are told them to our face. We're the rich guy living on the hill. No one would dare say something... Perhaps we're the rich guy on the hill - Of rich guys on the hill - perhaps we're kind of like a shade paler of Jay Gatsby (we can't all look like Robert Redford), but we're a shade nicer than Tony Soprano (sometimes - depending on what our foriegn policy is)...
But America is never about asking how we look. We're over that. We know we look good. We've got money. We've got talent. We're gonna be somebody. Oh - we already are somebody? Why thank you, you are too kind! Who are you, again?

Get Stuffed!!

In anticipation of the busiest shopping day, following the day of complete gluttony, you should consider getting loved ones a collection of Let Winona Shop for Christmas greeting cards, mugs, tshirts. Landover Baptist sister parody, Betty Bowers.com, has endorsed a whole line of special products sending a message of peace, goodwill and five finger discount shopping for the holidays.
Speaking of shopping - Friday is BuyNothing day.

I wonder if that will make saturday Steal Everything day? Go Winona!!

Good god - it's hard to believe but Never Mind the Bollocks celebrated it's 25 birthday. Of course, there's always chances for milestones to be created by marketing execs who own the rights to these albums (and also alot more other poignant anniversaries to celebrate) ... but it does make you think about how much has/hasn't changed since it's release. At least we're not seeing the repackaging of this dead horse...

Whoops, spoke to soon. Good god, what happened to Steven Jones?

Grim proof of how life and ideology can get even more horrific and absurd: 50 Die Over Miss World Article... Lot of factors at work here: the power of print, religious intolerance, Nigeria's own practice of stoning women, tafeta and televised spectacle... I'm not sure if I can comment further as it's... well, kinda sad.

So - I've been somewhat negligent on my blogging lately, but I think this captures why I am not prone to recount my life daily...

Listen to: The Streets
I think this group could be your wife.
Watch: Filmore!
I don't know why - but when you're really hung over, this kid's cartoon parody on Law and Order is too funny.
Get a/an:
Umbrella.
New Water Filter.
Dog.
Life
Inkling.
Look at: this...

This is a scary new fetish I learned about called Voraphilia - the sexual fetish of being swallowed. Fans of this fetish can gather at this site... Creeepy!

I always said if I could be anywhere, I'd be right here only charging admission. This article, courtesy of L.E.G, gives this phrase a whole new, intimate meaning. Ian and Paula, go to this and tell me how it is...

I'm going to start dressing like this... and you can't stop me!

Hi - I'm danger...
cough. hack. wheeze...
Dontcha just love the attitude, straight on down to the KNIGHT RYDER porsche waiting to go on many adventures? Whoo boy. Who told this guy this was acceptable?? Of course, this all comes courtesy from International Male in our new (SHAMELESS PLUG) Apparel Store, and luckily, I've resisted the temptations to start dressing like Lorenzo Lamas... but wouldn't it be, like really funny if I did dress like this? Of course, I'd have to go fight crime... Ok, it's not that funny. Stop laughing. Shut up!!

And while i'm kinda ill and hackin up a lung, I give you the latest of Alt-Country bitch-slaps.. This one at a recent Ryan Adams show... Ryan Adams' response to a fan who shouted out for Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" -- Adams screaming, demanding the house lights be turned on, identifying the offender, paying him $30 as a refund for his ticket and refusing to play until the guy left the hall -- even made it into Time. But not the response of songwriter Robbie Fulks, on his Web site: "Any reader on this site who attends a Ryan Adams show and disrupts the show with a Bryan Adams song request will receive in return merchandise" -- T-shirts and autographed CDs -- "of his or her choice equal to the cost of the ticket, from my online store ... please provide the date and location of the show, what you yelled, and what Ryan's reaction was."
While I hate the idea of organized heckling, Adams should be able to contain his silly ire and the audience member the old fashioned way: Have your Hell's Angel bouncers discretely find the offending party and beat the living crap out of them. Still, it is kinda funny to yell "Cut's Like A knife" during the prima donna's big serious alt-co set... Sheesh.

For your viewing pleasure, a little Andy on TV

Why? Because he's fabulous. Because he's even more fabulous on TV. Because it's Andy's world and the rest of us just live in it. Because we're all a little famous. Because I just watched this film and have commented it on the newly recreated Reviews Section...

The latest in academic circles - Buffy Studies... Yes, this is somewhat old news to those of us sad, grown adults hooked on teen supernatural dramas who heard rumblings about this earlier in the year - but the convention does sound like your typical tweed and meade drinking crowd. Here's a highlight of some of the program:
Jowett: Drusilla: Disruptive Monster, Dark Goddess, Daddy’s Girl.
C. Walmsley: Good Girls Go To Hell – The ‘Other’ Willow
P. Aloi: Leaves of Dark Willow: Beyond the Metaphor of Magical Addiction
E. Rambo: Yeats’s Entropic Gyre and Season Six of BtVS
S. Abbott: Walking a fine line between Angel and Angelus
M. Money: Pylea: A Fairytale for the Buffyverse
J.Hodson: "You made a wish to someone you’ve never seen before?": the dangerous power of speech acts in BtVS
L. Hills: Blood sausage, bangers, and mash: British English and Britishness in ‘BtVS’
A. Jenkins / S.Stuart: Extending Your Mind: The Role Of Non-Standard Perlocutionary Acts In Buffy
L.C.Patton: Horror, Hope and Heroes: Practical Theology in BtVS
J. South: ‘They show up, they scare us, I beat them up, and they leave’: the Dialectic of Self-Knowledge in BtVS
Pathologizing Marginality: Sickness, Limnality, and Otherness in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel
C. Wardell: Taking the Initiative: Science and Agency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer
S. Beeler: Overloading the Operator: Computers, Sex and Magic
B.Jacob: Los Angelus: The City of Angel
C.Thomson: She Who Hangs Out in Graveyards (and Libraries): A Heterotopology of Sunnydale
Wouldn't that be a conference worth attending?? For more PoMo-Textual fun, you can view it at Slayage - the online Journal for Buffy Studies... I don't know what these folks are going to do when the poor series goes off the air next year...

Sorry for the photo yesterday -- it was quite scary, i agree - but then again, so will the next few GOP-dominated years. Speaking of gruesome photo's, I've got one last gasp from the Halloween party. Actually, these photo's here that Greg's little haunted house photo station took are probably infinitely better and get almost everyone and their costume...

That's me and Will (the Drunken Librador) makin satan hands in Greg's haunted house. Ooooh spooky! Ok - I'll stop milking these photo's. Have image hosting - will go nutty with it...
In any case - I want to give a shout out to my girl P who celebrates her birdy this week!!

Happy Birthday, P!!!

I [heart] you!!!

Heh heh heh. You's all my bitches now!!!
Aaah... Nooo!!! Help!!!

So - did you vote today? I did. And not abseentee ballot either. I chose to go vote at my precinct. It was an outpouring of humanity and celebration of the human spirit - "Where'd my pens go?!" cried out some bifocaled League of Women Voter assisting the masses... A man with mutton chop sideburns to the floor helped me get signed in. Whenever I vote - it seems like I am voting for the first time. I am usually overdressed (because it's in either November or June), and I stand at those booths sweating like a stuck pig. I choose my votes with care, doing some preliminary crash course look at the pamphlet roughly an hour before (I try to be informed) - or sometimes if the names impress me... Vote baby! Vote! (Or you'll get a spanky!)
In any case - When you get a minute - you should bookmark the soon to be site for greatest film production company ever: Powerful Pussycat Productions!

Awww, crap. Image hosting is hosed at the moment, or maybe just with the image I was posting yesterday. It was a lovely still shot from "Far From Heaven" feat. the lovely Julianne Moore and lovely Dennis Haysbert walking amid a lovely fall day. Guess that will teach me to name-drop in my posts. Oh sigh.
In any case, today is mundaneday, the mundane preMunday before i get more mundane and morose tomorrow. Doing laundry... fighting a cold, possible vampire flu I caught on halloween. Speaking of silly goth obsessions - took some more still bw video shots yesterday that I want to work in the nav bar, but i fear this looks too, uhhh, "David Copperfield"...

You are under my spell.... I know. Ridiculous. but I adore the effect... It's incredible what you can do with video these days. The more it get's to imitate film (which was all about manipulating the medium)... the more we're enabling a ready army of auteurs.
Speaking of - I am wanting to do a film project of bad exploitation drug-scare films. If anyone in the vicinity is interested, let me know!!

New Post time. I've moved the pictures off and they are in the archives if you wish to access them again. In any case - tis' one of those beautiful November fall days that came out of the past (like the 50's or 60's) where you are dressed to the nines, and have just finished a wonderful brunch with Beate and Jim in Greenlake and wandered around admiring the foliage and bizarre, but brilliant green scum that covers the lake and makes swirling patterns as ducks swim placidly across the surface. One of those run on sentence, run on tag football in the leaves, feel like a Douglas Sirk movie as reinterpreted by Todd Haynes (who I met) kinda days...

Test Edit

Finally - after struggling through an afternoon of confusion, FTP, and Ofoto - we've got Party Pictures!! Party = Fun x Hella Fun. Rachel, Lyle and Greg went to town on their places and Greg even created a haunted house in the basement - complete with creepy crawl spaces, automated spooks, and gouhlish alien camera's snapping pictures (to be featured when I get them back.) In any case - have at the pictures on Ofoto. I didn't realize they had become so user friendly (and the poor persons image hosting)...


Scary... boo.

This dream that is called human life seems to be more sleepy and chaotic lately. Possibly because of a busy schedule, punctured with 4 hour periods of sleep to catch up. I'm definately older as I can't accomodate the lack of sleep as I used to... My endurance is still there - but my mental facilities definately have this melt down after the 12th hour and I'm checked out and useless. Sadly enough, it was this same facility that lent itself to going out late and getting up early...
In any case - for those of you who claim that Enrique's talent all manufactured pop gloss, that he's all voice-over - here's proof that this man can carry a tune... Good gawd - it sounds like a bad karaoke marathon doesn't it? I wonder if that's how I sound like when I sing???

...And just when you think there is a shortage of booger-n-fart kinda flash games on the Web, here's a lovely game from Korea featuring a little girl who kills bee's w/her boogers. Yes, I'm conceeding to my immaturity here - but this game kicks ass!!!

Welcome to the future... I've finally figured out how to bleedin' image host on Blogger... Boooyeah!!!
Anyways - back to my life: Last Saturday, I went to Michael's party at the "Paradise Hotel" (for the LGFF)... I was requested to come "in character" since I declined the offer to wear a plushie outfit, so I decided to knock out my Halloween costume of Zombie Gucci Model. By the time I assembled myself into a sleazy looking late 70's ensemble, I determined I looked more like John Holmes than Zoolander (by way of a very sleazy Nick Cave in his "Let Love In" years). I arrived at the party with a buzz still coming off a bottle of Chimay, and met up with Kelly and James. The place was a done up affair - - rooms done up with installation pieces, drag, theatre and a haunted house. I took full advantage of the free Absolut and soon found myself more in character than I was accustomed to being, at one point climbing on the roof and wondering if I would make a glamourous corpse having fallen off in my vintage JC Penny White Patent Golf Pumps. Luckily I did not find out.
In any case - Send good positive Vibrations to Lyle and Rachel who have had a bout of bad luck (I'm supposed to be getting my charms soon from my Wiccan friend who claims they work.)

No matter how misanthropic I might get in the following, days - I really shouldn't forget amazing people - like Laquetta Shepard demonstrating this act of courage in Kentucky.

While I would hardly think Mcdonald's to be a den of vice and porn - I guess it is in Scotland.... Corrr! I didn't even know you could view the innernet there!
In any case - I just saw 8 Femmes... The new film by Ozon last night with Pam. It was a charming film -- throwback of a Douglas Sirk whodunit complete with musical numbers... And again, hot Catherine Denueve Action (that woman could wrestle 'gators and still look glamorous. Here she just wrestles other belle du cine Fanny Ardant.)
I'm getting ready for work... Outlook for today: grab umbrella for potential sh*tstorm.

So - while you were sleeping, I've come again late into another internet trend that passed me by - Launch.com. Actually, though - let me rephrase this -- i was way into it when it was something else (before Yahoo bought it) and they had this alt-brit channel that played a ton of obscure greats, but then it became Launch, and I couldn't for the life of me keep them from giving me Britiney-N-synch crap served up every other song. Well, I think they're decision engine and offerings have matured (I mean - I could select Mission of Burma for crying out loud. I did select as my top heavy rotation David Bowie, Belle And Sebastian, X, Galaxie 500, Kristin Hersh, Tindersticks, Modern Lovers, The Wedding Present, Uncle Tupelo, XTC ... Yes, it sounds like a sad college station playlist in the Midwest (err Northwest), but then again - I am still that sad, unhip student who longs for laying on my dormroom floor and listening to KVRM.
In any case - this will be a permanant link on my homepage, but here's what I'm currently listening to! Listen and weep....

Ok - I'm here. I'm back. I'm sure you were wondering just what the hell happened. Well, let's just say the world got really messed up (and still is) and it showed me opportunities (and still does, kinda)... I didn't have alot of free time (but kind of have some at the moment). So - I'm going to start blogging again. (Yeah - I know, god help you... my dull life and most mundane details exposed for the world to see)... I figure it will be a good excersize to getting my site up to snuff before the years out and also to record the fact that I need to get back to the gym.
Also - I've totally been serving up offensive links to friends unwittingly in my address book - so I should spare them the agony and start posting here....
Welcome back, me.

What Happened

Ok - what happened?
I was on vacation... and I came back...
And I didn't blog.
The horror - the pain.
Yes, I realize that this is a painful thing, and I'm sure you'll get by... but, well... I've changed.
You see - I've decided to live my life and not publish it publicly. As the audience grew for the blog,
the less I was wanting to share.
I do want to write again - - however...
So, I'll probably do some kind of blog - but something a bit less personal.
I'm also working on a zine, so I'll update you all in a few weeks once that's up and running.
More later...
Ciao,
Love you,
Mean it.
J


So

Hey kids - I'm going to be on vacation for a week or so, so no blog today through next week. Once I get to Bend, I'll start back up. I'm hella busy now, but I promise to pick this back up.
Have I ever led you astray?
Cheers!
JD

Powerpuff Girls - 3rd wave feminists? Possibly - but we forget that this show is, uhmmm, a kids show that's simply crossing demographics... In any case, I'll gladly go see the movie with anyone that cares to see it.
Speaking of going to events - Momus' Patchwork Tour is touring through Seattle tonight and they are playing at the Graceland... This will be a great treat kids cos not only is my fave avant-gaurde one-eyed scottish popstar going to take the stage in all his glory, but he's bringing much talent from his label, the Gongs, Super Madrigal Brothers, and Phiiliip... I caught Momus last time he toured with Stereo-Total, and was pleasantly impressed that he gave it his all, James Brown style - only with iMac-style jams worked out with his Palm Pilot... Go see, go see!

Canapés and Investment Tips Both Served to Well-Heeled - I can't help but think of this as another retread through some neoVictorian hell as imagined by Tom Wolfe... The whole Martha Stewart Scandal has been lighting up the society pages with tips on how to invite controversial guests and the descent of several stockbrokers in the social register. Of course, we all sigh w/petulant exasperation "who the f*** cares", but at the same time, i can't help but find this another hilarious sign of the apocolypse... or perhaps just the demise of one domestic goddess getting her comeupance for telling the masses how to blanche eggs. No, it's possibly something deeper - something more unstable. There's alot of shit getting overturned in terms of markets and people's perceptions. The Worldcom hoo-haw this past week sank a big dose of reality into our cynical and jaded ideas of business and we found that people do often operate without conscious and more by connections forged in the Hamptons or golf-greens.
In fact, there was this hilarious story of dot.com noir as almost could be imagined by Chuck Palahniuk, only it's terribly real and scary. Not that anyone dies or anything - but the fact that these freaks were allowed to run rampant is enough to make you wonder if this is how people are truly operating these days. Is fiction so far off? Are we getting more and more extreme all the time? Is this turning into some form of high-tech barbarism? i don't know... Luckily we're a peaceful bunch where I'm at. Kind of like the druids. Only wait - they burned people in large trees. Nevermind.

Ahh - I missed a day. Sorry - was busy. I had a busy socializing kinda day, did errands, got into a very deep discussion with Jim on the fate of the economy, collapse of the US market, advancement of the next global ice age, and all sorts of depressing worst case scenarios... I then met up w/Rachel and Lyle and we went to Georgetown w/John and Tracy for pizza... I'd never been to Georgetown, but I must say - it's a whole other world over there. Feels kinda like an unknown neighborhood in Chicago...
In any case - the FBI kinda sorta hinted at possible threat on July 4th... Whoa geez! Well, they're not stopping flights - and well, I gotta live my life, so I'm going to L.A. next week.
Speaking of living free - Pride '02 is happening at this very moment - and again, I'm missing because I've too much to do... However, while everyone in Seattle, incl me, has been dissing it - deeming it tired and even more tired (and from looking at the lineup - it is the same sorry-floats from last year, the year before, etc) - we really have to acknowledge the fact we can even have an event like this. Would pride be able to be held in say - Egypt (where they put gays and lesbians to death?)... Yeah - I know, these sentiments are cliche, but dammit - value your freedom for a change (be you gay, straight, asian, black, whatever...) lest someone else decides to take it away.

Good lord, it's just two little words... but of course, one of them is meant to invoke a diety and has deep symbolic meaning for many thousands across the nation... However, it is interesting to note that this was a recent inclusion - "Under God" was put into the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954 to combat atheist communism advancing over the globe. I guess people still do not feel safe and need to know that classrooms across the invoking Yahweh to come down and kick some socialist booty (or probably any booty that's not worshipping the big "G"...)
Of course, none of the lawmakers up in arms over this remember back to when they were 9 yrs old and you simply made up dirty words to go around the pledge of allegiance.
In other news - it rained and I walked in it. It was nice. Heeeeh.

This made the rounds eons ago, but I've just recently discovered the joy's of Triumph the Insult Dog and his sparring with Star War's freaks outside the premiere of Episode 2... Hillair!
Speaking of geeks - I broke my glasses, which is sadly pathetic. I am always banging away at them or they go flying off my face and remain scratchless, but today the frame broke that was holding the lense in place sending the lense to the floor and chipping it. It came right when I was making a point or telling a story to a friend I hadn't seen in a while, so it created this awkward, humorless moment and I caught myself thinking why I don't choose to wear contacts... I am a gigantic klutz in general. I am uncoordinated and when I walk, I tend to barely miss accidents by a centimeter... but I usually fall backwards on something or bump into blind people as I am pointing out things on the street. I spill coffee on innocent bystanders and barista's... Does anyone know a sport that makes you more agile? Perhaps I should take up knife-throwing...

I'm whacked... I've got so much to do in the next few days before I go to LA next week (Hi Lorah!), It's scary. Speaking of scary - so, Cell phone's will not cause cancer, but they can cause brain damage according to Last Days'... Of course, I can't find the article online to back this up -- but Beate, you might want to consider wearing a lead coated helmut if they put those towers up on your apartment building.
Meanwhile, I've got to wipe a year's worth of sweat and grime off my face...

I've received a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead today. I think I got it because of a strange dream I had where I thought I could feel a ghost in my room... Perhaps it wasn't a dream. In any case - I don't know why I thought this would provide answers of some sort... Perhaps I don't even know the questions (as usual).
Meanwhile = It will kill Electroclash and that's probably a good thing: If they're mining all the postpunk blips and points, it's about friggin time they bring back DISCO PUNK... Think early-early New Order, Marianne Faithful's Broken English, early P.I.L, The Associates, and even dub stuff - Liquid Liquid, The Clash Sandinista, Blondie's Rapture, really edgy Grace Jones numbers - the whole pre-hip-hop electro-R&B bag... Up the base, stabilize the thrash, and get people dancing... Think of it as Mannerism for indie.

In the very sobering news department, a Large Asteroid Narrowly Missed Earth a few weeks ago!... You see, this is funny as I was actually contemplating the stars and skyline a few weeks ago (perhaps around the same time) and spied this strange light in the sky that could have been a planet, but was too big to be a star. Could it have been the asteroid? At the time, I calmly thought hmmm, I bet that's an asteroid or meteor that's probably heading to earth, and in some sick existential joke, the scientific powers-that-be know about it, but choose not to inform us as they want us to go through our days as we normally would until this apocolypse hits... I know, sick.

I made the mistake of telling my barber that my source year for hair is no longer 1979... I decided to ditch the John Ritter Shag go a bit short and spiky for summer, but to leave it full on the sides and back, but with the rule that it doesn't become a mullet. Well - long story short, I got a very lesbian style mullet from the 80's... Unfortunately, I can't even sport this out of irony... So I went and bought this Wahl home clipper kit with gaurdes and the whole 9 yards. I trimmed up the back and got rid of the mullet... Although, the back is still somewhat too full. I dare not touch it without supervision, however - lest I want a repeat of the headshaving incident of 1993.
In any case - I saw Guy Madden's Twilight of the Ice Nymphs, and unfortunately wasn't impressed. His earlier works (Careful and Tales from the Glimli Hospital) are far better, and interestingly enough, don't have quite the budget that Nymphs had... This later film, he abandon's his usual expressionist, intentional-faded/poor film quality for a big set saturated in cinematic color. Hopefully follow up attempts he'll remain true to form...

I've no energy... It's been stolen. I've had this sugar crash thing going through out today, and have been moving at a snails pace ever since. I did manage to get through about 4 sets at the gym (even w/Issaih bailing on me this morning), but after that, I couldn't even increase speed on the treadmill. I think it's a combination of poor diet and weather. The warmer it gets - the more I slow down. I even napped yesterday for 3 hours (which I seldom do), so I am not sure what the problem is. Shit - I keep falling asleep in my chair as I write this... I must be tired.....

hmmm - are we indeed living at the end of history when we've money to literally burn? Apparently so - At theSwiss Expo.02 they'll destroy 2 Million Dollars as part of a conceptual art piece... Of course, the bills are decommissioned, but it still makes you wonder your own reaction to this...

Alright, alright, alright already... I know, i gotta get off line before I get sucked in... But this is so blogworthy today: VillainSupply.com! For all your evil needs!!!!

Ok - so I'm taking a small Soba' break from cleaning... but while looking up a song that Neko Case recorded, I found this great essay about her influences (*this is for you, Ian if you are reading)... Ok, back to cleaning.

Owch. I'm a bit hungover this morning. I went to two parties last night - first at Unkle Ken's new place in Belltown, a rather posh condo with a huge deck, and then later to Michael's house, where we stayed until 3am, chatting up a storm with Kelly and Michael and co. and drinking ourselves silly (ahemmm, Rachel?)... In any case, I've taken enough vitamins and drank enough coffee to get over the nausea slope.
Today is National Get Your House In Order Day. It's the day where you don't go out and instead stay in and clean like a possessed Joan Crawford banshee... Scrub the floorboards and listen to the bad reggae program on Kexp (because if i start to listen to This American Life on KUOW, all I will do is just sit there and stare into space, drinking coffee...)
Speaking of houses - I found this charming site of a
house in documentation. I love the design - it's very much like a retailer like Blue Dot, only he's not selling anything... Just documenting.
Yes, a timewaster, but a charming timewaster nonetheless.

Today is the summer solstice... It means something other than the longest day of the year, but the only thing I could think of was it was the climax in the Great Gatsby (from 9th gr english - images of Mia Farrow running away from Robert Redford were a defining moment in anyone's youth)... Any pagans out there care to help? In any case, the point of the day is that the sun hits the earth longer than it normally would... Which, if you lived in San Antonio - you'd be hating life about now... Melt much? I hate the heat.

Shout-out to my homies, Michael and Kelly!! Hey you two!! I must say I am very impressed w/your respective journals. They are sooo much more dynamic than my stagnant daily edits, no-frills report. I esp. love the more detailed descriptions and the comments section. I should really enhance this puppy here - but I've had little time... Well, at least I've two more people I can add to my links section perhaps even have a nav' bar on my own blog (god forbid)....
Today was the day before the longest day of the year, and a beautiful day at that - and where was I? Hotelling it in some strange closet space devoid of windows or natural light. Most people would probably have protested, feeling that they are not taking advantage of the 60 days of gorgeous weather... However, I was completely calm, serene... Ok with the fact that there was no natural light or that the air conditioning was at artic levels. Why is that? I think it goes back a far way that I tend to be an indoor cat -- as a kid, I used to spend my summers indoors, watching reruns on TV, the blinds all drawn to keep the house cool.
I was going to draw up a huge compare/contrast between living in nature vs living in some space bubble - but I think this was covered already somewhere...

Ginger pointed out this intensely interesting story from the science news. Looks like teleportation could become a reality. Now - the argument really is: if you're molecules are killed and reassembled in the same spot, is it truly you or just a copy of you? Does your consciousness come with you? Do you revert to some cellular memory or are you a completely new person? Could you come back as the evil you - like the evil Captain Kirk? (By the way, I didn't come up with these questions - these were from Hodstaffer I think...)
Oh - and don't get me started on "the Fly" scenarios either... In any case, I think this technology is probably going to be used for mundane things (like JCrew sending the color you really wanted in real time). Yay retail.

I added pictures to my website from a hilarious Japanese game show called Smile Big Smack Hamster... Just when you thought the Japanese couldn't be any more avant gaurde or subversive. Ahhh, I do love a good game show that makes contestants wear cute costumes and subjects them to torturous tests...
In any case, I am suffering my own torture from burning my thumb on my new steamer. Like a true idiot, I grabbed the still steaming lid over my cooked Sole. Yes, I am of that breed of male that skips the first 3 pages of any instruction manual and goes straight to the grilling section (See Wok incident from a few months ago)... Needless to say, the steamed fish was somewhat gooey by the time I finished with it, but this TFal Steamer can do just about everything, so I am hoping to usher in a new age of eating more steamed vegatables...

Inspired by Amelie-like hijinks, you can look for discarded photomat photo's at IS THIS YOU?...

Sunday's Times was mapping out just what a dirty bomb would be like... Impact wise... Something you shudder to think, yet you do want to not rule out that something so horrific can happen. I can't link to the story, but needless to say I usually think about these scenarios as I walk up the Beacon hill bridge to Pacmed - it's span over the traffic of I-5, people on their way to work (like me), and a whole panoramic view of Seattle... I don't know why, partially because the bridge is ancient and I feel the damn thing tremble under my feet everytime a semi drives on it, or partially that I feel the need to confront the awful gut feeling that something unseen could be slowly undoing humanity as I quietly go to work. And then I remember that I am not quite as angstful as I was 10-15 years ago, to give it a rest, and get my ass in my desk asap.
In the meantime, it's nice to always have a constant in an ever changing world - like ABC doing a Go-Go's Biopic... I love the sensational, trashy biopic!! They are the network TV's waste products of the summer off season (because series are all in repeats until fall), so they resort to telling the torrid, terrible rise to fame of some celebrity, or in this case, rock band on the rise and fall to fame. The setting is always stagey, the actors are terrible, and the drama of someones life becomes reduced to cliche grunts and moralizing about whatever their crisis was at the time (in the Go-Go's case it was too much blow and too many boys!) I can't wait to see who they'll cast to party like it was 1982 all over again!

Today is Father's Day... Please go phone your dad. Right now. Not later...
Again I didn't participate in Rachel and Lyle's yardsale. I meant to - but I still flaked and I am ashamed that I bailed and instead went to a liesurely long brunch with Beate... Sorry guys, i totally suck... And instead of selling - I actually ended up buying a rather large old office chair... I am not sure where I am going to put it - but it is pretty cool...
I am not getting enough sleep. I keep going to bed around 1:00am and then having to wake up at 6:30 or 7:00am... I went to go see Insomnia (find your own damn link for this - it's a summer blockbuster), speaking of, and Pacino's tired detective reminded me of my own fried mental state lately. The movie itself was interesting (as in Network Movie of the Week interesting, not 10$ ticket interesting)... Christopher Nolan certainly didn't dazzle us with anything new (*the whole cop on a morally ambiguous line is even more tired than the main character... And how many damn ariel shots do we need of Alaska?)... In any case - I'm going to rest my head a minute... I'm so tired....

Seeing alot of movies lately... Last night I rented Donnie Darko... A rather excellent, yet complex film. It's somewhat hard to classify - but here goes: Think Back to the Future if written by Don Dellilo with a dash of Ordinary People and J.D. Salinger thrown in - all of it set in 1988. The director does an amazing job of capturing real teen angst - and the year I graduated: I was 18 at the time the movie was set and I too thought that a) the world was going to end or b) I was completely crazy. (*Note: I now know for a fact that a) the world will end - sometime... and b) I probably am crazy, but I'm too tired to act on it.)
In any case - today was to be my garage sale day, but a coworker is having a family emergency, so duty calls. Not terribly bad as I need to get some sh** done anyways. Besides, I've not gone through my crap yet to see what I need/want to sell... (Hell, I still can't get into my storage because I've lost the key... Why do I complicate things like this? Sigh... Anyone have a pair of bolt cutters?)

With all the current unrest in the world, you can at least count on the grim fact that people will bet on anything... Yes, that is a very grim story indeed...
In any case - I watched the Anniversary Party last night, acted/written/produced by Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming. It was a good stab at Hollywood flirting with dogme style... The plot revolved around a married couple and their guests interaction at an Anniversary Party. The character development was good (probably because it was essentially actors playing actors) and dialogue that was non-scripted was great... however, the scenes toward the end tended to get a bit too Edward Albee (the drug induced night scenes seemed to be the turning point and the film launched into high drama mode at the end...) Anyways - worth a rent. (Hmmm - I wonder if I should bag my reviews page and just start posting here...I seldom see movies, etc...)

Today was H-O-T, hotter than hades and Georgia Asphalt combined... I was sweating profusely throughout the day, especially with some ill timed walks... The problem with the Wick boys is that they have overactive sweat glands. Even looking at something hot makes me start sweating buckets, and sometimes it get's to Chris Farley level of sweating. I sincerely hope the cold wave comes in this weekend and we get some variance in the weather. Hot days like these are going to drive me insane...
I'm booking some trips this week for July. LA first week, Portland the second and then to Bend for a week of R & R w/my peeps (hi peeps! I'm coming home!!)...
In the meantime, you can all ponder one of the latest inequities in casting for Hollywood Films:
Apparently Hollywood cannot define it's correct bird species and has been using the wrong birds... Pam Shaw are you reading this?

Sorry to have lapsed again last night... I was up late watching the Quay Brother's Institute Benjamenta... It was a slow moving film, about a man who enters some kafkaesque school of Servitude, and slowly watches the organization crumble while everyone learns "the one lesson". Being a Quaye bro's film - you don't have any idea what in hell is actually going on, but it looks beautiful. What is with me and absurdist parables?

Something I learned today - I need to push my face back while I'm lifting... I scrunch it up and thus build the muscles around my eyes... This leads to lines and perhaps a big unibrow to match. More importantly, I learned about my stomach muscles and how I can keep them from throwing out my back... Issiah says it will take some time to focus those things and just put them on autopilot, but it does amaze me how much the human body is made up of various parts.

Speaking of - I was perusing the books dealing with Artificial Intelligence and Cloning. In terms of ethics - I go back and forth on the issue personally, although - it's already the pandora's box left wide open. People will inevitably do something foolish with good intentions and - oops - there's the first cloned human. Isn't it cute? Don't you want to take it home? Every home could have one... I wonder if this dwelling on cloning came from seeing Star Wars II last friday? (Yeah, I finally saw it at Cinerama - in the very front row because I came in very late. Needless to say, I could see Natalie Portman's blackheads I was that close to the screen)... In any case, the last few scenes seemed to have all the government characters (the morally ambiguous good guys) scratching their heads looking out over a sea of clones... Yoda then making some grim assessment that the "darkness has fallen" (reminding us of grim reactions following Hiroshima for some who actually grasped what the new technology actually meant...) Same thing for cloning. They've unleashed it... What next? But I'm getting too deep here... Bioethics and Star Wars will make a good film crit' for some struggling film student, but I'm tired and hungry and want to eat my cloned hamburger...

Remind me never to do that again... That being consume 4 daquiri's the night before at Beate and Irene's party and then go work out the next morning... Ohhh I am feeling soooo nauseaus at the moment. Oddly enough, I woke up with the hangover... Drank a whole pot of coffee, got over the sick slope... then went to the gym and had all the toxins re-released...
In any case - the party last night was fun... And they opened the roof up (which was never opened up when I lived there)... Unfortunately, I seemed to have gotten entirely too drunk to remember much of it... When will I learn?
In any case - I cleaned yesterday, so I can rest up and have a lazy afternoon in the sun. Read the New York Times, especially this article on David Bowie! (Yayyy, new album! New Tour!) The great thing about Bowie is that he's neither new school or old school - he's simply Art School...

No time to blog, so i'll leave with you with Mittens the cute kitty courtesy of Paula!

Last night, I saw this film - Fast Runner at the SIFF. It was an amazing film about an Inuit tribe and their passion and politics all within the span of 3 hours (Ian stop rolling your eyes! It won the Palm D'or at Cannes). The landscape was beautiful, of course - Artic snow and purple skies, later turning to summer and spring -- a pattern of greys, browns, greens... The people were amazingly good actors - delivering lines in the first entire Inuit language film... Also the plot line throwing out the romanticized notion of the "gentle people", they were just as bloodthirsty as your Shakespear tragedy...
Back to Civilization, Salon interviewed author/professor Richard Florida about the Creativity Index of Cities and what it means to the vitality of where you're living. Very compelling arguments - but also somewhat too simplistic -- of course creative people are going to want to be around other creative people, of course diversity brings out creativity, of course gays and ethnic groups promote the arts, of course companies who have creative challenges and incentives thrive better than those with just monetary reasons... However, he does back some of this up with some data. I'd be interested in reading his book and seeing what stands out.
Some of this of course doesn't take into account the "Cheap Rent" index either... He does, however, acknowledge the fact that the creative index can chase out the locals and service industry because the rents are too high... And a good part of this is that if you can afford to live in the city, you have to accept the fact that city living is not going to resemble the idyllic suburb dream (3 bedroom homes, big bathrooms, 2 cars, etc)...
I also found the talk of conservative cities vs liberal cities to be a bit one-dimensional. I think more goes into play than just tolerant people... Histories and legacies unfortunately are ingrained so much into places like Detroit and Pittsburgh that you can't divorce the two and start to have a clean break... On a small scale, I think of places like Medford - the place where I lived and though how much there might be pockets of liberal thinking, they're ingrained in their redneck ways so much that it makes it impossible to do anything different than lumber or grow pears... (even if the former industry has to be euthenized)... The more I read this, the more I am wondering if Seattle isn't sliding down the Creative index (even though we rank in the middle)...

Dee Dee Ramone = Dead... Sigh - 'tis been a sad year for Ramones fans. We've lost another one of Debby Harry's old prom dates to the needle. (For those who collect Ramone's paraphanalia, be sure to keep Dee Dee's rap album under lock and key, the value is now sure to go up.)

Times they are a changing - I just read in the Obits section of the Stranger:

• The Julie Cascioppo Experience has ended it's 16 year end run at the Pink Door due to "tight-budget times". That's unfortunate. (LEG, are you reading this?) I do hope she takes it elsewhere. Her version of "Fancy" is still unforgettable, and her Nordstrom Lady should be trademarked and used in an ad campaign it's so hilarious. She is doing something later this month at the Rendezvous.
  
• Also, another institution goes - Cornish art school is moving off of Capitol hill (out of those big victorian mansions and into some industrial park in Lenora Square. It will keep the Roy Street facility... but that still takes vibrant, confused pretentious art students off Capitol hill... Leaving us to the yuppies and trendoids...
  

...And struck out on the dating scene? Consider a variety of personality types at Meet-an-inmate.com! Courtesy of LEG, this link can help you find your prospective partner, and determine if parole will be in time for a spring wedding... Probably not a big suprise, a lot of these posts are almost more honest and telling than the personals (*Check out some of the posts with artwork like this one - amazing!)... Probably because it's a harder sell for them to make to the outside world...

Courtesy of Ginger, here's a cool thing for all you big apple people (err, I mean - you're not "big apple people", but rather denizens of the big apple) a special
nyc bloggers directory by subway system... Aheeeemm... Hey Ian, Paula - doesn't this inspire you to get a blog going and join your fellow NY'ers? Come on people, show me the love... Start blogging today... Reach out! We've only a grand before we can stop this crazy ride....(*Can you tell I'm currently listening to KEXP's pledge drive at the moment?)

In the unmitigated gall department today, several people answered back w/a Collective "Really? No sh*t" to the recent discovery of Greenhouse gases... Yes - It's truly a world breaking discovery that we're responsible for the destruction of the planet.
Sorry, I just think that it's absolutely ludicrous that we've not done something to change this in the past 10 years. That transportation infrastructures in the US are as backward as driving a stagecoach across an open prarie (or rather car on the interstate)... But what's completely outrageous is this Ho-Hum accompanying piece that suggests we'll all have California Lemons and Florida Oranges growing as a result of Global Warming .... I am completely speechless. Someone pass me the SPF 80 proof while we slowly roast ourselves...

I finally ditched the wiener-dog and decided to throw good taste out of the window along with any HTML skill, used Yahoo's chinzy page-builder to assemble my homepage... Don't laugh, it's seriously tacky looking (ala 1995) because I'm bad at HTML, have just a free editor (that has the usefullness of riding a unicycle on I-5), and page-builder at least helped me get this up... The hope is in about a few weeks (months) i'll buy Macromedia or Go2 or something that can make this look a bit more high-design minded... This is, for all intensive purposes a skeleton (or essentially a geo-cities page. Sigh.) Expect the blog to move here when that happens as well...
In any case, the Sunday NYT magazine featured an interesting article on a case of 9/11 hysteria among girls, featuring Sheridan (where I think my mother's relatives live. I'll have to ask them...) An interesting, if not comic yet tragic look at how stress manifests itself in us all (not just 10 yr old girls), among other social influences (esp w.r.t popularity: "You got anthrax and I didn't" actually some of the root cause)... I loved the students thinking it might have had to do with the really old books from 1962!

Sorry for the blog lapse yesterday, I was at this Pagan thingy in Fremont last night. We went since Costi was playing, and the bill sounded a bit more diverse than usual hippie fare. Beate wore a glamorous red wig and I sported my staph infection in style... The event was fun -- participants in full mythological drag, it reminded me somewhat of parties in Ashland (esp the crowd of those freaky Wiccans I used to know... Nice, but odd folks - great parties.)

Speaking of Viruses, the alien virus has made it's return with the warm weather - my dreaded staph infection that somehow manifests itself on my face every 2 years has made a tiny lump on my lower chin. The usual drill is use a topical creme and cover it with a bandaid until it disappears, answer to questions like "Shaving Accident?" and feel ugly and deformed until it vanishes. The first time this happened was when I first started working, and I had open sores all over my neck and chin. I had to grow facial hair and kept trying to keep them covered with big, obnoxious band-aids you would normally use for your knee... I so hope this isn't going to linger for 2-3 weeks. I might breakdown next week and bug my Doc' for new topical creme... Just like zits, this can kill your social life (and your life in general as it's pretty damn lethal!)...

Computer Viruses as Art? Apparently so, according to this site... Since coding has a creative bend to it, so do Viruses. A recent NYT article on this exhibition quotes the curator, her favorite being the Cascade virus from the early 90's, which caused document letters to tumble to the bottom of the screen. She compared it to an Apollinaire poem where the words form a raindrop on a page. Ironically enough - the exhibition is sponsored by Symantec, the antivirus software.

This is a thing of beauty - The Poem Tag Project... Create your own poem tag. I just wish this wasn't virtual and we were all creating poetry and walking it around to everyone...

In the meantime, corporate life succeeds at making my waking moments artless and full of dull prose. I am behind in my email and I am soooo not wanting to dial in to get caught up before an 8 hour training session. Instead, I want to eat my Beans and Rice and watch "The Others". Maybe not. Oh lordy...

What was I saying?

(Confidential to Ian: While I am flattered that you thought of me at the performance spectacle, you should know my own mediums are Yams and a very well-timed Polar Bear outfit...)

Memorial Day - Day we can finally break out the tiny tanks, the flip flops, and cheap ghetto beer and sit and just take in all that is sun, fun and surf. Ok - so it's not quite officially summer, but may as well be... Everyone is summer-hungry, fun-hungry, and god forbid - sex-hungry. Probably because of 9/11, depressed economies of scale and recession, being told that Irony is dead, going all bling-bling and shaking your rump by the pool is not an acceptable past time...
Alright - so I personally don't go and shake my rump by the pool - but you get the picture. Seattle is tired of the gloom, and want's to at lease have the option of going and shaking it's flabby, pasty ass by the pool if it so chooses... We want the sweet smell of the Pacific Sound sizzling under the sun and scent of cocoa-butter sunscreen permeating the air. We want the lazy nights where you wander through a neighborhood, the smell of a 1000 or so weber grills. We want the uncomfortable grass stains on our back, the first bad attempt at a suntan (which we then quickly relent and go back to covering ourself for the next 3 months), the first canonball into lake Washington. Memorial day is more than honoring your war-dead and allowing linen and white shoes to enter your wardrobe... It's about having full license to be fabulous and fun (as the ads suggest)...
I seriously don't know what's gotten into me... Perhaps it's the fact that I am so ready to start going out again and do things... Perhaps it's because I'm needing a life outside of airconditioned corporate walls... Perhaps it's because of fear of mortality and loss (or in some cases - a reaction to those dwelling on the cold subjects of the dead )... Perhaps it's because of a well launched advertising campaign that features young fresh people with perfect skin and hair having fun under an impossible sun...
Hmm - in the meantime, are you trying to plan another Britpop invasion? What I find odd is that they've no essential subcultural sound or genre they can use a catalyst for UK sales in US, just saavy marketing.

Oooh lordy. I am a bad boy... I didn't really eat well yesterday, and neglected to do cardio since last monday. Dana threw a party for Laura at her place, so there was lotta booze and food... Luckily I abstained from drinking and managed to keep a 10ft radius from the plate of Krispy Kremes that someone brought (although had a donut from TopPot earlier that afternoon)... Still, the fact that I've been away from the gym for a week, been kind of sick and not doing any cardio activity is making me a bit lethargic... Maybe I need to take part in PuNk RoCk AeRoBiCs!!!!! (Ok - obnoxious aside: but excuse me - I had this same idea in the 80's when I used to go to shows and was sweatin out the toxins to DOA and the Pixies... sheesh.)

Got some more pearls of wisdom from Bruce Mau's An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth... Mau, who colloborates with Rem Koolhaus, has a few good generalizations for human and beast alike that go beyond architecture...
Speaking of the arts - I woke up this morning and read an arcticle in Index Magazine about the artists MacDermott and MacGough, who have been living in period detail to the point of driving horse-drawn buggy's and living w/out electricity. They are truly 1900-House and it amazes me that they manage to keep this up. I suppose if you are really in tune with a particular time period, you can withstand anything (doing laundry for 5 days as opposed to 2 hours)... I think it also takes someone who is meticulously neat (MacDermott remarks on how he can't get anyone to do an authentic starch anymore and how Gosford park didn't get "the laundry right".) Me personally - I am a child of the times: messy, disposable, all over the place. I guess my post-modern squalor is the future... Too much trash, and not alot of durable products... I thought about this earlier last night as I wandered around the aisles of RITE-AID. How much crap do we honestly buy? Oh well, I've got to go recycle...

And speak of lost in cultural translation (from yesterday) - hell if I know what's going on in this cute cartoon...

AHHHHH!!! Scary! Avert you're eyes!!! Beware of the W-under Bulge!!!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Seriously though - Goertzel get's her hair cut by the Wunderbulge's creator, so watch out - I might just start packing (Sound of people screaming NOOOO! in unison.)

Hmmmm... Stranger's "Last Day's" Column again raised the ugly argument Is the name and thematic design concept of the hot new nightclub Chop Suey insulting to Chinese people? As someone with an intense Asian culture fetish and double dose of cultural sensitivity training up the wazoo, I feel compelled to comment - "uhhhh, well... errrr. Guess you'll have to ask someone who is Chinese"... They do raise a good point that the name derives itself from the dish that was served to oppressed migrant workers, however at the same time, the place isn't an offensive characterization of Chinese people (like say, Abercrombie's offensive "coolie" shirts that were yanked off the site about a month ago)... I often worry that my own attraction to Asian culture borders on 19th century exoticism, often coming off as the creepy caucasian asiaphile that you see in the corner of some bar leering at the culture... Or not. I don't know. Is it morally acceptable to covet a particular culture's furniture? My friend Dana decorated her house with Chinese paper accents on the light and socket covers. Turns out that the pretty paper is actually called "Hell Money" - and is burned at Chinese funerals. Oh. Oops. The Chinese man that explained this wasn't offended - in fact, he was amused. I guess this at the end of the spectrum of cultural misunderstandings, this is mild. Chop Suey falls just left of the middle of the Spectrum, harmless and unintentional, but could be offensive if framed alot differently. It's much like the time in a Japanese department store that sought to promote the Christmas holiday. They decorated the store with much panache, everything letter perfect - right down to the lifesize statue of Santa hanging from a Crucifix just over the store's escalator.
In any case - where was I?
Oh yeah --- in the general scheme of things, arguments like this are incredibly trivial and silly.

Still somewhat sick -- but recovering. Although, Issiah tried to kill me tonight on doing supersets (where you are doing back to back sets of weights, very little rest time). It was the kind of sets where I contort my face and make sounds like I'm being choked, and cough and sputter and start tearing up... So I skipped cardio as a result (I've such little energy right now, I can barely move)...

Shameless plug - but I just got the coolest lamp from Target today. It was a steal at $6! It got me thinking about how well Target has done in terms of marketing minimalism to the masses, and some of the more progressive ideas they've developed. I'm salivating just at the concept of their QBits Modular Furniture System. You simply buy pieces to create desks, tables, etc. Truly innovative in going against rigid mass production... Of course, my buy-in with Target, along with everyone is else is that they do hype themselves pretty well. Stephen Sprouses "Punk Rock Americana" is an interesting lesson in merchandising (do a Louis Vitton bag, then do a beach towel) -- as well as fostering public opinion (who's gonna argue with the American flag?)... In any case, I've not actually set foot in a real Target since the 90's, believe it or not... So perhaps (as usual) I do not really know what the hell I'm talking about...

In any case - Just read a scary article, and to all my friends in the big apple - be careful!! If it get's too much in NYC, go hide out in the Hamptons (that's where you're supposed to go, right?) -- or the new Prada store, but avoid the lower part, Ian says it's Stinky and Stale....

Sick or allergy? You be the judge. I've a head full of gunk, and have been wheezing and sneezing like crazy. I so wanted to call in sick - but i decided that I was borderline at best, and probably would sit around sniffling and thinking about an escape plan to come home and nap. I better actually try to go to bed at a decent hour (like now) - speaking of sleep, nightmares after watching Buffy, etc this looks hella creepy doesn't it???... Like some Hunky of Chucky kind of budget horror movie? G'nite...

OMG!!!! Our very own Ginger quoted in the NYTimes!!! I feel famous just to know you, G-Spice!! I had the Times scattered all over my apartment -- and of course, avoided the business section (I've enough depressing, dirty laundry as it is around my apartment, thank you!) -- but I had no idea that there would be Ms Thing, getting press time on the same page that features a freakish Jeffb holding a giant Picachu... Keep up the media dish, doll --- and don't settle until you get a good cry on Oprah or your own clothing line at Macy's.
Speaking of retail - so I really did go to a tupperware party last night, or rather - a Pampered Chef party. Cheryl threw it and had us over for sangria and product demo's... I never thought I would ever attend something like that, or if I did - it would be part of an installation performance piece... but in any case, my running joke of the evening was my lack of cooking skills and how I burnt water. The saleswoman knew me to be a lost cause when I finally relented and bought star shaped ice trays. I figure they will make my Long Islands more festive this summer.
Aside from that - it's been a very odd, uneven, last 48 hours - I kept getting the feeling today that I myself was the subject of a dogme-style movie written by Todd Solenz, and there's an audience laughing somewhere at my pratfalls and pathetic attempts to be a compassionate human being.
Or is it just me?

Found out which Buffy bad guy I would be... These quizzes are sillier than Cosmo, but what the hay. Guess I should be flattered i'm more the sexy bleach bad boy type than the nerds or creatures with odd appendages. Speaking of charming Brit' lothario stereotypes, Beate and I went to go see About a Boy, the latest Nick Hornby adaptation starring Hugh Grant as a vain, immature bachelor who eventually learns about "family"... It was really good - seemed to be subtle in its character transformation and kept the character plots on track. (Ian, you read the book? How did this match up?)...
In any case - I think I've a Tupperware party I have to run to...
Oddly enough.

...Ok, I really need to stop wasting time and get to the gym, but I found the freakin funniest thing on Modern Humorist: Hot Picachu Action!!! Oooooh!!!! Baby! Not for the faint of heart or children under 18 please.

Another saturday morning finds me in gym clothes, listening to Neko Case, and drinking my morning cup of Torrafazione Roma Roast, only to find while catching up on my reading that, what's this... coffee is bad. I'm somewhat puzzled as my own blood pressure is pretty damn low (knocking on wood it stays that way)... But it does signal the need for me to really give up this crap. Booze being the one vice on the way out (well, ok - sorta - - I had about 3 Genevers on ice last night)... Coffee's the next that's gotta go sometime. As of now, I am using it to artificially pump up my heartrate so I can go to the gym and work on the eliptical machine at an increased rate...
In the meantime - the CSPI did an investigation and found that pizza is high in calories and fat! Mais non!!! Says the report - "2 slices can pack enough calories, fat and sodium to last an entire day. Add toppings such as pepperoni or meat and you might as well get reverse liposuction"... Shit. So, I guess that means I'll be taking Jet City Pizza off my speed dial...

A coworker and fellow Mac-person sent me this article on copy protected CD's... Apparently even playing these in your Mac will do irreprable damage, so even Apple has taken a very unsympathetic play and pay the fiddler, no applecare for YOU! kind of approach. Yeah - thanks alot, JLO... I really didn't want to burn your crappy CD anyways (oh yeah, and your butt is no longer an attribute either.)

Attack of the Clones is the current buzz right now. And since it's getting some good buzz, I might mosey down to the multiplex and see it some afternoon - but definately not in the next 48 (hell, 148) hours - this is truly diehard territory and not for the weak of heart (right, Ginger?)... I know people for my office who are seeing this right now and it's their 4th showing already (after opening last night)...
In any case - I ran into Barbi and found out how hella busy she is these days, so no - she wasn't blowing us off any... She did want to get the Soundtracks back into biznesss and suggested 5/27. Hopefully we'll all commit -- my flake factor lately has been excrutiatinly high, but after working a full week, I'm deservingly cranky and lazy on my weekends. But - having this scheduled in advance is half the battle...

Ok - update - Grandma's diagnosed and has got a bleeding ulcer and is luckily doing much better. With luck, she will be hopefully released tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed, still...
In the meantime, I got stinking drunk before going to see this highly influentialthis Cult Comedy troupe of the early 1990's... and then after at Galerias for Jame's real 40th (i mean 25) birthday... I'm toasted so I better go to sleeeeeeep.

My grandmother is currently in the hospital - I found out yesterday. Of course I felt guilty before that I couldn't be there for mother's day, but with this happening as well - I felt somewhat helpless. Things are better today - I talked to Dad and they've got her out of ICU and in a standard room, she's getting tests done tomorrow and Dad says she's looking considerably better. I shouldn't worry - she's 95 years old, looks like she's 60 and has an amazing will to pull through anything. I'm still wishing good thoughts her way (and if you happen to be reading this - please do likewise)...
In other news - I am trying to jumpstart my homepage. I realized that the dour faced dauschaund is becoming a sad joke. So, I've given up on getting a flashy page up and am going to settle for a real amatuer looking one. I've downloaded Cobweb, a free editor (and lemme tell ya - you get literally nothing. You have to know your HTML). Because I know little, don't expect much....

Today is Mother's Day... If you haven't called your mother yet - do so! Mine wrote me a great letter yesterday (thanks MOM!!!), and sent along this article on our great-Auntie Babe who is 102 years old! In the spirit of all great women and mothers, here's my great aunt babe:

Gladys Moore

"I have always been concerned with the matters of the Spirit," Gladys says to us, only minutes into our conversation. Later, she interrupts a story she is telling to observe, "Spirit is something that is hard to realize—it’s hard for a mind—we have so much to learn." Throughout our visit the topic keeps resurfacing, making it clear that "matters of the Spirit" are still something she is very much grappling with.

Gladys is a thin woman with fly-away white hair who looks tall, even sitting in her wheelchair. Her eyes, over a century old, are blind; yet that isn’t immediately obvious because of the way she directs her gaze at people when they speak, or rolls her eyes towards the ceiling in thought. Her logic has a surgical exactness. And when she smiles, it’s like a cloudbreak. Brilliant.

Raised Baptist, Gladys says she believes in God and in God’s Creation. "God created it right," she says. But she goes on to say that others who don’t believe in God still do good in the world, so she can’t condemn them. She also says she doesn’t hate anybody. "Once, I thought I hated Hitler," she tells us. "I wanted to wring his neck." But even he was a normal person once, before he got his dangerous ideas. And it costs a person too much to hate.

When Gladys was a small child, her family lived in rural Texas. The area where they lived had no established church, so they sunk four posts in the ground and covered them with thatch, and held church services beneath. She remembers riding home on her father’s shoulders one night after a service. "The stars were so clear," she tells us. Her father asked her if she wanted to get down and walk, but she said no, because she couldn’t take her eyes off the stars. They had never looked so clear before. "Do you remember," she asks us suddenly, "how things looked when you were a child? Like you were seeing them for the first time." She flashes one of her brilliant smiles. "Everything was magic," she says.

In Texas, Gladys’s family worked on a cotton farm, and she picked cotton side-by-side with the children of Mexican farmworkers. Some of the boys told her the boll weevils tasted like oatmeal, but she swears she never tried one to find out if it was true. She will admit other weaknesses, however; for example, when she and her husband couldn’t scrape together the $200 they needed for a down payment on a farm, she played the Lottery to get it. "Money’s money," she says with a glint of mischief in her eye. She admits she still plays the Lottery, and hopes that one day she’ll win big. She says she wants to make life easier for her two surviving children—both of whom are in their 70s.

When Gladys was 23 she married her husband, a chiropractor. Before they were married he lived a while in Hawaii, and they courted by mail. She says they wrote each other a letter a day. The correspondence filled several trunks; eventually they threw the letters away because they took up so much space. Being married to a chiropractor made Gladys what some in her family call "a health food nut." She also has a suspicion of pills, mentioning briefly a time when she was on medication and unable to think clearly. "People weren’t honest to me," she says. But things are better now. She demonstrates this by reciting poetry for us. "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree…" she begins, and quotes Joyce Kilmer’s poem in its entirety. She closes her eyes and waves her hands in cadence, as if she were conducting a choir to sing along.

In the 1920s Gladys’s husband built her a wooden car that was "shaped like a bullet." When they moved, she drove it all the way from California to Oregon. A woman driving alone—not to mention in a wooden car—was quite a curiosity at the time. Her husband and their children drove in front of her in the family pickup truck, which helped turn back some of the more aggressive onlookers. "Traveling is an education," she says. "It gives you a bigger world to think in." Later, in Portland, Gladys and her sister worked in a restaurant called The Cat and the Fiddle. It was an old Portland favorite that played host to many celebrities. Gladys says the sisters were well known by the restaurant regulars, who like to call them Pretty Wanda and Happy Gladys.

Looking both back and forward, Gladys is optimistic about life. "The world changes," she says, "but lots of things are getting better, especially for women." Men used to "rule the roost," but now women are less willing to let them. She thinks a woman trained in politics is just as good as a man. She’d be interested to see a woman in the White House. She remembers Hawaii’s last queen, who led the island before it became part of the United States. She sings "Farewell to Thee," telling us how it was written for the queen when Hawaii became a state.

"Our memories make us what we are." Gladys tells us later, her unseeing eyes gazing at something too distant to see, and it’s clear her memories have made her rich. But they’re not all she is. We ask her if we can take her picture, "Oh I don’t know honey," she says. "Do I look alright?" We tell her she looks beautiful. "Then I’d be honored," she says. And she smiles.

Hmmmmm... Interesting.

Got this from Blogjam - The urinals of Aquarium a trendy club in London that allows you to pee and watch TV... Of course this would be in the men's room - the same place where you can always find a copy of the New York Times or print-outs from Yahoo Fantasy Football laying on the floor.
In any case - check out the urinal site for other crazy things, among them the trough that Ian will have to probably use when he runs the NY Marathon... Speaking of, I should probably "go" and then go to the gym...

I recently got a cd anthology of Laurie Anderson's work... a retrospective. I was realizing that it's been just short of 20 years since I owned Big Science. I used to be completely ga-ga over her stuff. I remember how freaky she first seemed - watching her on NightFlight (when it was really avant guard and had whole programs on cutting edge artists -- and New Wave Theater premiered right after...) -- they played the video for O' Superman, my preteen friends and I looked at each other in affixed puzzlement - what was she doing? Who was it that was calling her answering machine? Whose long arms? Whose Petrochemical arms? What's wrong with her hair? Was this New WAVE!?!? A year or 2 later, I buy Big Science, thinking it avant gaurde pop as opposed to Po-Mo art recorded for the masses. It was the kind of album you would play and lie back on your bed and look at the ceiling... Sometimes in the dark.
Of course, I remember the Rollingstone review of "Life in these United States" - 5 stars! It was 4 CD/LP set. Damned if I could ever afford anything that lavish then ($50 seemed really expensive for Vinyl back then)...
The year after, Mister Heartbreak seemed to be the ultimate. It was exotic, had strange bird noises and textures. (In Speech class, I embarassingly try to deliver her "Lang'da mour" in my most monotone delivery. Went over like a lead balloon in conservative state competitions, but the college judges liked it.) A few years later - Strange Angels tour in Portland, I finally got to see her live... and remember being floored how minimal, yet grand her tour was. She stripped it even further down 3 years later when she toured campuses shortly after the gulf war. It was mostly an oration, a few numbers, but less exploring, more opinion... even a political rant at one point. After Bright Red came out... I kind of lost touch, occassionally seeing her on a special or hearing a great film score she did (Fallen Angels uses 'Speak my language' very well)...
Then after 9/11, I rememered O' Superman and even worse, 'Into the Air' - the lyrics about aircraft, losing control, military, American identity, safety... and immediately wondered how she would piece all this together. I went to her website and found nothing new or updated, however I could almost hear her words talking about people, Americans... identity. Alienation was never her message - but more of optimism, sensing a need to connect with everyone... She seems to be able to speak with a compassion about our wreckless ways, and forgiving about our inevitable lack of hindsight.
Unfortunately, I was out of town for her last show -- but I bet it would be poignant as always...

Spoke too soon... and no, I didn't even look at the Sunday Times before I posted my musings on retro-retrofuturist nostalgia... In any case, now that this has been outed by the NYT, it's probably d.o.a (and we're not talking Pete Burns DOA either)... In a related article, they did give much kudos to Fischerspooner (another complete coincidence as I had been perusing their clever site just the other day.) Ian, Paula, if you are able - catch them. The show is supposed to be a big saucy sandwhich of entertainment. Then again, that's how I like to bill myself...

Should I shell out $$ for blogger pro because it has spellcheck? I'm looking at past blogs and seeing my spelling errors come back to roost. In any case - today was cold. I was underdressed and think I might be coming down with something. That or I'm just needing more sleep. Speaking of which... ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I couldn't help but pour over Rolling Stone's 50 Uncoolest Records, the opposite of their last month 50 Coolest feature (w/their disclaimer that these are albums they actually love - kinda like guilty pleasures)... I find it vaguely patronizing, a few of the artists deserving of some other tribute than "it's so bad it's good". I'm always compelled by arguments of taste because in 20 years, someone get's a facelift (metaphorically speaking) and the world is in love with them all over again... Case in point: Burt Bacharach. I'm currently listening to Reuben (from Ladytron)'s Datamath Phat Camp mix from Emperor Norton. I'm debating on seeing them this wednesday, but that's beside the point. I got to thinking about the whole Electroclash scene -- One hand, I want to throttle the GenY kids for rifling through my New Order and Yello LP's, telling them "enough goddam nostalgia", but on the other hand, I want to give them props for coloring in the lines, making something refresh, yet artful (that music was pure aesthetics if anything...) I think it's good to have a healthy irreverance hese days. Case in point? Fischerspooner - the troupe from NY that establishes a working link between Avante Guarde and the Solid Gold Dance numbers. As long as there's a sense of fun, a sense of creativity as opposed to fashion... Ann Magnuson said the world is divided into the Cool and the Groovy. The Cool are calculating and seldom take risks, the Groovy are all about taking chances and looking foolish. Fischerspooner probably apes the Cool, but are being pretty groovy...

I'm watching "Some like it Hot" on DVD... I don't know why I bought it. Possibly because of Billy Wilder's passing, or the fact I own few classics... I am at the scene where Marilyn and Tony Curtis kiss.
In any case - last night was a few Amazon reunions. I ran into old friends I hadn't seen or rather, see only at Birthday's and retirement parties (only, they aren't retirement parties - it's usually someone leaving or being forcibly ejected)...
Today Beate and I are going to LaConner and visit Jim's Haliboris farm. Then tonight we'll have our own showing of the film. Beate managed to go to Dogmathon and gave this review:
went tonight and matt mccarty announced the film in a very good
way---sort of " a warm, human movie". he saw the depth and appreciated it.
and the audience loved it. aside the film michael is in which showed
last, it go the most applause. and was not critizised as not being true
to the form as the movie before. the first 3 were dogme, the 4th a
documentary--a good one about people with mental problems in our
neighborhood by lorian elbert-----jamie liked hers alot and got her number.
the last 3 were against dogme, icluding kelly's with michael.
it was like michael--funny and overly loud, but i liked it.
so i got to be there. and i am glad. jamie asked if anyone of us are there and i hid. left quietly, too. did not want to speak since it is for you to do so. they laughed a lot about what lyle is saying, about jason swallowing the coins, about me playing with the doll, about the tit scene.
Speaking of showings - here's a link to Beate's
grandson's art show!

From about 8am on - I decided I was having one of those days if scripted by Zwick or those horrible people who wrote for Ally Mcbeale, as if fate decided to dish out small, strange problems and see how I'd react. Some were horrible, some were sad, some were strange, some were funny. All were either punctuated with a TV soundtrack stylings of some incidental music to convey "gosh - will I get through this one or not?"... It was a very fucking long day. And I have to be back in tomorrow at 5am.
In the meantime - my movie is playing at the little theater in about 40 minutes from now and I've no idea it will be received because neither Rachel or I will be there... Oh well. Maybe today was my own form of strange Dogme movie?

Bad blogger - you were down for the past 2 days and I couldn't post a thing. I had something I wanted to rant about, but forget it... Now I can't remember. Oh well. Today is Mayday. Day I either celebrate the workers revolt against capitalist tyranny or the day where you leave a basket on your neighbor's doorstep of flowers. I'm doing neither - I'm going to see the Stage Reading of the 1988 cult classic movie "Heathers". Should be good...

While not quite a dirth, there have been a few articles recently about the death of Layne Staley, former singer for Alice in Chains. I find most of them apologetic in wanting to condemn heroine abuse, while at the same time portraying some kind of memorium for their contribution to "grunge". I am ambivalent. I think I made peace with the fact that GenX lost it's cultural "bite" as soon as Kurt Cobain shot himself. We found the act too extreme -- sure we were disillusioned and cynical, but not to the point of self-destruction... Which is why the remaining 30-somethings are making Staley's death a small footnote, as opposed to something that was a
watershed for a generation. Perhaps we've killed romanticism? Perhaps we no longer care what rockstars do behind closed doors because we care more about the product? Perhaps the ego has become divorced from the work? Perhaps a musician can simply perform and not have the press speculating if smack being shot in the dressing room has something to do with their depression and angst that comes out in their music? Ironically enough, as soon as Mr Cobain ended grunge effective in 1994, Generation Y came back with simultaneously with electronica and ecstacy, pop music took over and we've boy-band hell now ruling the airwaves and a healthy underground scene (ok somewhat...), pop diva's and their struggles are getting boring and letting the world destroy you is soooo 1994.
In any case - enough of that. Last night I went to a gala 75 Yr Anniversary party for the 5th avenue Theater. A friend managed to get Beate and I comps so we went for free and mingled with the Skinners' and Nordstroms', watching a century of Vaudville and Silver Screen Spectacle... Cyd Charice showed up to accept an award for Ann Miller. Looking quite elegant, we think she might have had bad eyesight as she nearly fell off the stage at one point (sadly ironic for someone who danced so gracefully). Afterwards, Beate and I managed to hideout in the wings and attended the staff afterparty on the stage with cake and champagne. We spoke to a few of the stars from past productions ("Hair" and "Some Happy Fella") - and I spilled Champagne on the artistic director's DKNY jacket... Oops.
One thing that was absent however was the electrifying tribute someone could have done to Nick Cave, the only one to perform a rock show at the 5th Ave, and his power in drawing the crowd out of their seats and to the stage. Guess they don't want to relive that problematic concert (velvet seats were ripped, people smoking, the venue just isn't cut out for any rock show no matter how mellow or subdued the talent... Ok, perhaps Low or Magnetic Fields could perform...)

Welcome to HELL... The Bachelor is on for another season. As the Jam once sang the public wants what the public gets and this shit is living proof. Few articles have come out to denounce this, but in the end - this irreality show gets the last laugh - they actually have high ratings... Is the LCD index that low now that people want to watch this misogynist throwback of a show? I had the misfortune a week ago of being right under the TV at the gym that was playing this, and had to watch some picked over bimbo tearfully admit that she "really thought she was the one"... I thought throwing chairs on Jerry Springer was debasement enough, this is downright pathetic...
Oh well - at least in other parts of the world, people don't care and would rather get buck nekkid with 1200 other folks for the sole purpose of art . Lord love 'em!

Issiah kicked my ass tonight.. Rightly so. I had to cancel tomorrows 8am session for work reasons, so he combined 2 workouts into one. Plus - we've determined that my girth is not decreasing any and that there's some unrecorded calorie intake or lapsed Cardio session that's not doing the trick. I'm thinking it's some supplement I might be taking, because everything else I do is pretty by the book. Oh well.
In any case - thanks to Beate, I finally managed to dub the finished Dogme film onto video and hand it in to Lilith at Wigglyworld. It's 8 minutes longer than I said it would be (sheepish grin), but I couldn't edit out certain key scenes any more than I already did.... For those of you in Seattle, it's going to be 5/2 - 5/5 (at the Little Theater I can only assume). Go see it! Go see Beate rock out to Sepultura and hug the Bainbridge Ferry. Go see Lyle do his best Crispin Glover off Paxil imitation. Go see me do obscene things with pocket change. Go see James paint his boobies! And tell me what you think... be honest....

The world is a crazy ball o' confusion, inhabited by people who will watch anything... but i don't care today. I'm living in chaos, but a wake up call tells me to take charge this next month like no ones biznazz, y'know? Won't tell you what the wake up call was, but let's just say it's a good second chance at things, and to not make any more foolish choices.
There are alot of bad idea's out there. Luckily, I'm not going to act on them.

Start spreadin the news - Ian is leavin' today. Yes, our boy is headed for the Big Apple, NYC. I am of course happy for him, but also tres depressed that I will be w/out someone to go out for cocktails with and laugh hysterically at pop culture fobiles and local bad fashion choices with. He was very much my partner in many crimes and he will be sorely missed. However, he's chasing the great American Dream which many of us are too nervous to do at the moment... so in any case I wish him safe travels and much fortune in the big city (but I also want him to MOVE BACK SOON, GODDDAMMMIT!!!!!!) Oh - I didn't say that...

Todays bus ride was it's usual 20-minutes late, tin-can smelling of puke and cold medicine rickety ride through the hospital trail of misery, and I seriously questioned why I still tolerate this cities laughing joke of a transit system, when I realized at least Seattle Renters Rule!!! ... Something good to come out of bust... I just wonder why the sudden dip in Ballard? Didn't any of those urban engineers play enough Sim-City to know the key to happiness is parks, cute boutiques, and dirt cheap rent? Oh well... I guess the write up in NYT Travel section a few weeks back wasn't enough to keep them...
In the meantime, I will struggle to stay on the hill. The last thing I need is to get into the middle of residential breeder hell. Although, the above article had me toying with the aspiration to one day rent a loft. Be one of those faux-cool sitcom characters with a spacious one-bedroom loft that overlooks impossible angles of Downtown Seattle... Or one of those edgy superhero types that lives in a loft and has their superhero costume kept behind a secret panel.... Or one of those decadent, drugged out jet-setters who lives in a flurry of designer jeans and bed partners... Oh well, dreaming is free...

Busy, busy weekend. Between many social groups and activities, I think we were never in the same spot for longer than 15 minutes. In any case - it was good hanging out on Lyle's bday, seeing Brent and Jonelle and visiting w/Ian. I'm still amazed that I managed to fit everyone in... One thing though, drinking through most of the weekend seemed unnecessary. Not that I was drunk or buzzed, but I more or less became lethargic and crampy, and then end up paying for at the gym the next day while I sweat out all the toxins from the night before. I'm seriously considering going on my own personal temperance movement for the summer, but where's the fun in that?...

Abercrombie, the frat-boy staple has yanked their offensive line of asian stereotype tshirts, even before the email campaign had time to fully circulate. You now click on a link and see Kate Moss - something slightly less offensive, but still - c'mon fellas - grow the hell up. Failed irony is not your forte. Making every person on the planet conform to stereotypes is your forte however.
In the meantime, it's completely acceptable to call someone a skank.

Whooo... After my prerequisite 3x jack and cokes, I am understandably tipsy. In any case, spent the night out on the town w/Ian, Pam and Kuznitz. Toying with the possibility of getting one of the vacant apartments in Ian's building. The price is low enough and the fact it's back up on 15th is such a draw... There's a few other perks. The drawbacks - well, the noise, traffic, etc. Also - that 15th is now the official hotspot is somewhat daunting. As someone who was on 15th during the quiet years - it's a bit disconcerting to seeing your old strip turn into sexy overnight, teeming with hipsters paying outrageous rents leftover from the boom years.
In any case - as I am probably going to miss Ian terribly, getting an apartment in his building might just be too weird.

Ladies (and a few gents), it's official - men do make passes at girls who wear glasses...

Further proof that I'm an emotionally stunted 14 yr old girl stuck in the body of a grown man: Went with Beate to see the 5th Ave Theatre's production of Hair, and couldn't rush the stage at the last number because I felt I looked too fat and didn't dare want to get up on stage. Sigh - I am sooo neurotic.

Talk about a Paradigm Shift... Very interesting that Moz and his tops the fab-four, but then again - Rolling Stone was/is the 60's machine that ranked the Beatles at 1 probably, and NME is definately focused on the last 20 years (and has always been)... so it's no accident by any means (and this tide is out, so it can't even turn)...

Is your emo-band name dull as mtv dishwater? Can't think of a whimsical name to contrast you're heartfelt, moody lyrics? Well, look no further than the The Emo Band Name Generator (found courtesy of Memepool!)... Give it a whirl! Just remember - I get "Sunny Day of 44"...

While reality tv refuses to fade into obscurity,the self-absorbed take a comic holiday...In the meantime, the rest of us are completing taxes, some are rushing off late to work, some are celebrating birthdays:
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RACHEL!!
This week - I'm focusing on stability, strength and organization. Oh shit. I just remembered I forgot to cancel my teeth-cleaning. Crap. Crap. Crap. (fumbling for phone)...