May 2007 Archives

some weeks just seem made of days that conspire against you. I am now in one of those weeks.

Grumble.

More on this theme when bullets stop flying over my head.

I bought the DVD of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (The Director's Cut) a year or so ago, but it managed to get filed away in a stack of kids DVDs and I'd forgotten I had it.

I was looking through my DVDs last night, trying to find something better to watch than re-runs of house that I'd already seen, and I found said DVD. Given that I was hopped up on goofballs for the throbbing pain behind my cheekbone (I admit it, it was an excuse. My tolerance for meds is so high that they don't make it not hurt, they just make me not mind the hurt), I decided it was a perfect film to watch.

A little background. I saw this movie when I was about fourteen, at a midnight movie (remember midnight movies?) in Los Gatos, California. These were the days when midnight movies and rock concerts were a dope-smoker's free for all, so no one cared if we lit up. People used to bring five foot tall bongs to these things. So it was a very stoned, very tripped out crowd. We'd either find an older brother who could drive, or we'd call the parents (mine, usually) who didn't mind us being stoned.

Well, my doctor says I have a sinus infection. That's two in a month. Shows you what happens when one works much and sleeps little for several months running. The casualties? social life, creativity, immune system. What sucks is that I've gone two or three years without one of these things (i used to get them all the time).

Fortunately, there are lovely modern antibiotics to treat this, and lovely modern pain meds to take care of what feels like a large nail being driven slowly into my face slightly to port of my nose.

And there was much rejoicing (yay.)

I was listening to this today, played at huge volume in my truck with the windows all open, as I sucked down a cà phê sữa đá.

It's one of those songs that just makes me happy.

Flavor of the Month, by the Posies.

Play It. But don't even bother if you can't crank it way the hell up.

I've come to the conclusion that Maggie Gyllenhaal may be the sexiest woman on the planet (well, apart from a couple of my readers, though I'm not naming names. Just assume it's you).

Now, I sort of had this feeling after seeing Secretary, as I've discussed at length with the lovely Miss Syl. I mean, it's a great film, and she's impossibly sexy in it (I could watch some of those scenes of her getting spanked over and over, and in fact have, in my head at least). But the whole film's brilliantly sexy, with that pervasive feeling that makes one want to go home and grab someone (or oneself) and have many orgasms.

But y'know, one film, you can't always judge. I mean, Melanie Griffith was a contender (who am I kidding, she owned it), for like six months after Something Wild came out, But by the time she'd made Working Girl that was well over and it proved that sexy as fuck in one film doesn't mean much when the film's over (and don't get me started on Ms. Griffith now - *shudder*).

So the other day I watched Stranger Than Fiction. And that cemented Maggie's place on that 'sexiest women' list.

Now, that may be a strange movie to do that. It's not a particularly sexy movie. It's a very good movie - with a surprisingly good dramatic performance by Will Ferrell (and you know, I think he can do still better), a great performance by Emma Thompson, and an incredibly clever script. But even with a vaguely romantic element, there's no sex to speak of. This could not be more opposite Secretary, which radiated sex.

But from the moment she turned up on screen, sweaty, frazzled, angry and tattooed, I wanted her. I didn't even remember she was in the movie, so my reaction went something like wow, she's kinda hot - whoa is that Maggie Gyllenhaal?

The thing that makes her so damned sexy in this movie is that they in no way set out to make her sexy. They just presented a character, as they did with other characters in the film. She's a vaguely eccentric, vaguely emo sort of craftsperson; educated, but working in a simple, honest profession as a baker. But being that kind of character, she wants to make a grand, if silly, political statement (silly in that she can't win, not silly in intent, who doesn't agree with the idea of withholding taxes that go to pay for idiotic wars? Well, idiots, I guess.) She reminded me of a number of people I know; artists, writers (and some bloggers I know.) And she was the kind of character I like to write about. She has that I just am who I am kind of sexy.

And then there's the tattoos.

I have to say, Maggie's tattoos in Stranger Than Fiction are some of the best fake tattoos I've seen in a movie in a long time. The typical mistake is to make them too perfect, too bright, too dark. They're almost always over-done, and usually, not done with the right sort of aesthetic. They may look real to the typical viewer, but to those of us who have and know tattoos, most movie tattoos look a bit suspect. The Tattoos in this movie look exactly right; the japanese half-sleeve on her right arm has exactly the look and feel of a tattoo this character would have, and it's done the way it really would be, not quite wrapping all the way around in back, leaving the area around the armpit bare. It was so convincing I actually wondered it it was real.

The one that really got me though - and damn if i can find a picture of it - was the star on her neck. Now, again, the temptation would have been to give her some big, splashy, obvious thing, and to have made it perfect. But that's not what this character would have had. The tattoo, a black star on the right side of her neck, an inch or two below her ear, was sort of ordinary. It was small - maybe the size of a nickel - and best of all, it was sort of crooked. It was that, more than anything, that made me fall for the character, and by extension, for the performer. Because she looked like, was, the sort of character who'd have a weird, imperfect tattoo on her neck.

I spent the whole movie wanting to kiss and bite this little star tattoo. It was absolutely distracting when I could see it, and when I couldn't, I kept wanting her to turn around so I could see it. And while I loved the movie (it's incredibly clever and well written), I spent the next two days with a naked, tattooed Maggie Gyllenhaal in my head.

I think I need to go find every other movie she's ever been in, particularly the ones where she's naked. Mmmm. Naaaaaked....

I keep meaning to post something about my favorite show on network teevee - Supernatural - and not getting around to it (and even posting this has taken me several hours due to the relentless interrupts and (not-the-fun-kind- of) distractions).

Luckily, someone else did it for me, saving me the effort.

Chelsea Girl says:

"Supernatural, unlike Angel and Buffy, is specifically concerned with family connections and origins. While Angel gestures at his long-dead family, his anger at his repressive father and his guilt over his murdering them, and while Buffy evolves from adolescent at war with her mother, while she retains the pain of her father’s abandonment, and while she grows into being a mother to her sister, the two brothers in Supernatural never leave the burden of their family. In fact, who they are in relationship to each other and to the rest of the world underlies the show every single moment. You never forget that they are brothers or that the demon they seek changed their family forever."

"In many ways, then Supernatural’s metaphor is one of family origins and secrets—of those things from which you were supposed to be protected in the dark—and of which you, piteously small in your narrow bed, always knew were out there lurking and waiting to spring to light."

Darling, sweet Chelsea Girl does way better justice to this show than I can. If you've managed to miss Supernatural so far, or if you've only watched an episode or two and written it off as a Buffy knock-off, it's time to go back and give it a try. Rent it from Netflix, or better, buy it, because it's a show worth owning. The episodes are good for many re-watchings. Season two is due for a fall release (too long, too long!).

Supernatural's just been renewed for a third season, and I can't be happier about that. It's the kind of show you just get hooked on; great looking characters, great music (the best seventies rock), the coolest car on teevee (a black '67 impala); a buffy-style mythos about those who stand between us and the evil thinigs that lurk unseen. It's one of those shows that gets better the deeper you get into it, and it didn't have the dreaded sophomore slump you see in some shows after great first seasons (*cough*veronica mars*cough*).

I'm saving the season ender on my tivo. I don't want it to be over quite yet.

I woke up from a weird, red-wine inspired dream about people I think I used to know. It was strange, and disturbing, and I think vaguely sexual, though it faded away all too quickly before I could digest who or what I was dreaming about.

I woke feeling spacey, though, and not only because of the cold from which I'm recoovering, and last night's bottle of saddleback merlot.

I woke, though, with with Gillian Welch's Time (The Revelator) stuck in my head; not Welch's own version, but my friend Ken's brilliant cover (about which I've written before, though alas, he's never recorded it, so I can't link to it), a song of soaring beauty and intensity, at least the way Ken does it, and a song which winds up seeming to mean so much more when sung than the lyrics seem to say when read. Funny how music can do that to words.

I wanted to go back to bed and seek the dream, figure out who or what or where was in my head, but coffee called me and the need to get to work made a return to bed impossible.

Now, nine hours later, I've still got Revalator going thought my head, and I still want to go back to bed and chase that dream.

Admit it. You love zombies. How can you not?

I mean - Night of the Living Dead. Do we have to go on?

Yes. We do.

It doesn't mater if they're darkly gothic and horrifying - The original, classic Night - or modern and stylish (28 days later). It doesn't matter if it's horrifyingly serious, or vaguely campy (Night of the Living Dead, with it's surreal shopping mall), satiric Evil Dead 2, or outright zany (Shaun of the Dead, Return of the Living Dead).

One of my great addictions - my only real video game addiction - is to the Resident Evil game series. Alone, only the most minimal weapons, and shambling, moaning monsters coming to get you from all sides. How can you not love this?

So I was absolutely thrilled when I got a packet last night with a recent graphic novel find, Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead.

Now, these came out a while ago. They were published in comic form in starting in 2003, and the first graphic novel was published in late '05. And I vaguely recall seeing mention of them on BoingBoing. But I finally got around to picking up the first couple collections, Days Gone Bye and Miles Behind Us.

They're fantastic - beautifully drawn by Tony Moore. This is a graphic novel version of the way Resident Evil feels, while also getting into the heads of the people who've survived this un-named zombie holocaust and have to deal with living in a world where they're prey. The first issue is absolutely harrowing, starting with the protagonist, Rick Grimes, waking from a coma to find himself in the middle of a zombie movie.

They owe a vast amount to George Romero's films, as well as to many other classic zombie films (and I think to the survival horror game genre, I keep seeing things that look like Resident Evil 2 and Silent Hill); Kirkman isn't trying to break new ground here. What he's doing is trying to tell the ongoing story of the survivors, not in two hours, but, as Kirkman says in his intro, but the whole story, what happens to these people after the first night. How they live with this day after day.

It's grim. It's scary - which really isn't easy in a graphic novel. The end of the first volume left me almost gasping. These characters live in a world where violence erupts from nothing, absolutely without warning. And what might be scariest is watching what it does to the people who live through it.

I'm only a little way in so far. And I just had to go order the whole rest of the series (1-6 are out, 7 is due later this year). If it stays this good - wow.

Zombies. You just can't say no.

One of those things i think is just plain good for the psyche every now and then is to work with kids.

Now, I'm not one of those people who's just nuts for kids. I'm not above describing a child as an asshole, and my tolerance for any kid, even my own, isn't that long. I was, for most of my life and including some moments after having them, firmly against the idea of having kids. And I could not get the big snip fast enough after I reached child capacity.

But sometimes proximity to childhood just makes one feel good.

I got shang-hai'd into being a chaperone today for my older daughter's seventh grade class (i know, what are they thinking - me, the very picture of bad influence, as a chaperone) on a field trip, and this was my first with a public school class. My kids have both been in smallish private schools, so it's always been a small crew, small trips, usually with parent drivers.

Today's trip, the group of parent chaperones was larger than my kids whole grade at the old schools. Seven buses - big coaches, not yellow school buses), something on the order of three hundred kids. Again, bigger than the whole school in days of yore.

I had a crew of five thirteen year olds. And was warned abundantly by my daughter that I had a couple of the grade's bitchiest girls (she didn't say bitchy - if she said bitchy, she'd have then had to go wash her own mouth out, but I can't recall the word she actually used), and a couple of the grade's biggest trouble-maker boys.

I wasn't in any mood for any of this. My week's a fuckin' mess. The same old story about work, ad infinitum, and personal business matters that are getting further and further behind. I agreed to do this a couple months back when I didn't quite have the foresight to know I'd but buried. Plus, you know, morning. I'm not the world's happiest morning guy - I'm an ogre before coffee (not the cuddly green shrek kind), and while after, I'm awake, I'm not particularly what you'd call gregarious. So having to get up an hour early for the task didn't help.

But once I started talking to to kids it didn't matter. The four or five I knew said cheerful hellos, and the teachers (whose job never gets quite the respect it deserves, if only for shepherding skill) gradually got the amorphous crowds of kinds formed into lines.

My daughter brought over my small group (what's the collective noun for a group of teenagers anyway?), and introduced them. One of the girls shares my daughter's name (Olivia); I greated her with I have your name tattooed on my chest, which was data she seemed utterly flabbergasted by. The two boys proceeded to try a flim-flam on me by quickly switching up names ("No, I'm nick! No, I am nick!"). I pointed at the tall one and said, "no, you're Beavis", and to the short one, "and you're Butt-Head. Clear?" They looked at each other and started to giggle, but didn't play the name game with me again.

Later, my daughter reported the over-heard conversation;

"Olivia's dad is scary."

"No, he's not really"

"He is, kind of - imagine meeting him in a dark alley."

In other words, we now had our understanding.

And so, into busses and off to San Francisco zoo, on what you might call a typical San Francisco late spring day; foggy, damp, bitterly cold.

I have mixed feelings about zoos. I love animals; while I don't really like owning pets, I'm endlessly fascinated by the behaviors of wild animals. I grew up watching documentaries (and in fact, when I find time, still turn to cable channels that play nature stuff), I used to endlessly study books on all sorts of animals. I grew up learning about simian social behaviors as my father studied it (he was a communications teacher, and I grew up on evolutionary biology and communication physiology).

But zoos, particularly older ones, are very often filled with too-big creatures in too-small enclosures.

As with many older zoos, SF zoo is gradually replacing out-dated enclosures and building more natural exhibits. They've a long way to go, but they're heading the right direction, and many of the older enclosures (like the elephant house) are closed down right now while entirely new exhibits are built.

So the trip didn't leave me with the usual sense of sadness I tend to have when I leave an older zoo. Maybe that's cause my main focus wasn't on the wild animals that live there, but the wild animals that I had under my temporary care.

I haven't spent a lot of time with packs of free-range teenagers (at least, since I was one). And I was pleased to see that, even though in some ways these suburban thirteen year olds are much older than the calendar shows (my god, a lot of them seem to be dating already, and a lot of the girls are wearing clothing that could have made me insane at that age), in many ways they were very much kids. They wanted begged to see the petting zoo, first thing after we finished visiting each child's assigned animal (where each child in my group did a small public recitation of facts about black rhinos, chimpanzees, meerkats, kangaroos, and hippos - the recitations being their own idea, not part of the assignments). They were dragging me in five different directions at once at some points in sheer excitement over howler monkeys, tapirs, lemurs, prairie dogs, and capybara.

Despite the fact that the day was freezing and none of us was dressed for it, none of them bitched or whined. There was no show of i'm too grown up for this, no jaded eye-rolling. When it was time to go, not a one of them wanted to leave. Only the fact that the bus was warm and that the wind was getting colder got them out the gate.

I've spent a lot of time on field trips with classes from pre-school through fifth grade; I was afraid this was going to be a completely different experience, particularly when the kids I had today were described as so-and-so and so-and-so's girlfriend, in both cases. I was wrong; they were just kids, and I remembered why, every now and then, I think working with kids would be a great thing to do for a living.

Of course, I got to leave them all at school and get in my truck and go home. Which is what lets me think that from time to time. People who do this every day have a calling, or a level of patience I can't fathom. But doing this every once in a while - getting the hell out of work, watching kids be kids, and showing 'em that authority figures can be cool, weird people who get it, it just feels like a really good way to spend a morning.

After the medication wore away, I was left with a soup of words. It wasn't a fetid thing, but it was un-refined, incoherent. The ingredients were there, but inexpertly mixed.

It wasn't incomprehensible; it was simply kaleidoscopic.

This is something like what I was trying to say the other night. I'm not sure it makes as much sense now as it did then, but what sense it makes is more readily parsed by those outside the writer's own skull.

I wrote a great post the other night, filled with insightful linguistic philosophy; all about the difference between symbolic meaning in words themselves, and the cultural meaning, the psychological meaning; the way words carry not just inherent sets of meanings that are closely defined, but also a reciprocal meaning, a meaning the hearer or reader adds in for him or herself, and how this complicates communication.

It was beautiful; it flowed with an effortless elegance from thought to virtual paper, expressing something I've been striving to say for a long time.

Only, I was full of darvocet at the time.

Yesterday I tried to edit it and it was unclear which language I'd been typing in; or to be more accurate, the words were generally english but in syntax, I was dealing with a language more akin to orc.

So I'm left wondering, what the hell was I saying? The only thing worse than a fickle muse is one who's hopped up on goofballs.

Well, so much for hockey season.

Nevermind the stupid cup. It's over.

sigh

When's football start?

it just turned summer somewhere between friday and monday - i can't quite tell when because I was well and truly out of it all day sunday.

But it's 75 already and headed the general direction of 90, and i can NOT get my head around the concept of work today. I keep thinking, don't go don't go don't go. Only thing is, work laterly has nothing to do with progress, it has to do with run-as-fast-as-you-can-to-slow-the-backwards-motion. Which, in a word, sucks, and which drains me slowly of all will to work.

It's goin' to hell anyway, I think; instead of fighting it, let's facilitate it.

There' part of me that wants to step back from anything that looks like a sinking ship and add fire; if it's going down, send it down in a spectacular fashion. Don't just crash your car, roll it and send it off a goddamn cliff.

I don't like to do things in small ways. Subtle, to me, means use a smaller sledge hammer.

Of course the sinking ship and crashing car analogies are hyperbole; nevermind though. That's the feeling the struggle sometimes has, when the struggle is not toward good or great, but toward mediocrity, and when the cause of the struggle is corporate strategy meets corporate schedule. The result for me is an excercise in frustration, and of all things, I tolerate ongoing frustration least well.

But let's get back to summer. Because it's summer, when the sun shines and the clothing decreases, when skin darkens, that I most long for days by the sea, boats, the scent of sweat and coconut and rum. I walk out into the bone-dry northen california heat and wish, desperately, for that island-dark girl who's supposed to be bringing me my drink.

Instead, I spend a monday morning, as the mercury creeps up, in a DMV waiting line to replace a lost driver's license. No sea, no rum, no coconut. No beautiful dark-haired, nut-brown girl beside me on glittering black sand. No salt on my skin, no smell of ocean, fruit, tropical flowers. No afternoon trade winds. Just a queue, bored government workers, a large room filled with people who wish, like me, to be anywhere else.

My friend Kenny - after sharing with me the evil that is the sake bomb, and then engaging in karaoke until the sushi bar kicked us out - played me his latest recordings.

I attempted to post something about Kenny last year, when he left to chase true love in the outback. I found the topic daunting, for Kenny's that sort of friend. But Kenny's now back from theland down under and has been recording sweet, sad, beautiful songs.

Here, without his permission (because I never ask), is one of his latest demos (I typo'd that as 'demons' which seems to fit eerily well); Kiss. Listen:

You can hear Ken's older stuff at basement3.com, though what he does now is vastly different that the older cds; you can hear a couple more tracks like kiss at sonicbids.com.

I don't know much about cinco de mayo
Im never sure what its all about
I say I want you, and you dont believe me
You say you want me, but I've got my doubts

Oh baby, I was bound for mexico
Oh baby, I was bound to let you go

Listen:

How evil are you?

Right, like there was any question.

(stolen from the lovely and talented pst)

Like you haven't felt this way...

(Thanks to DN for sending me that and to Dave Coverly for drawin' it)

I remember when I used to get home from trips and have time to write a big 'ol trip report with photos every time.

Actually I don't remember it, but I have posts like that, so I should remember it

I flew down late Wednesday; a great flight as it turned out. I'd been heavily girl-watching a woman at the ticket counter when I was in the security line, wanting to get a look at the front 'cause the back was so good; all the right curves in all the right places, and a whole lot of strawberry-blond hair. She was in a weird sort of shorts-pants-suit that shouldn't have worked, but for some reason did; it looked both casual and business-like, and cute.

The self-same woman wound up sitting next to me on the plane, and the front was even better than that back; she wasn't just cute, she was gorgeous. We spent the hour-and-a-quarter long trip to Anaheim talking about tattoos; she won my respect by knowing some of my tattoos were Maori, and she wanted as much of a tour of all my tattoos as I could give without 1) getting up or 2) dropping trou (which I'll admit I'd have done happily if asked).

So it was an unusually good flight.

D-land was great. We'd picked a dead week, so thursday night we were able to walk on to any ride in the park with no wait - and no major rides were closed, so I had my near fill of indiana jones, the matterhorn, haunted mansion, and of course, Pirates of the Caribbean (but more about that in a moment).

Friday, I went on a ride I'd never done before, at Disney's lesser park, California Adventure; Grizzly River Run. And I gotta say, this ride kicks ass. We got there late friday, and the temperature was dropping, so there were no lines at all; however, this meant that it was freezing. We rode until we were near hypothermic, and soaked to the skin. Only cold drove us off. The good thing is, we were staying at the Grand Californian, so our hotel was literally less that a hundred feet from GRR. I love GRR for the ride, of course, but an added benefit is what a good dousing of cold water does to pretty young ladies tee-shirts. Mmmm.

In any case, I flew home from d-land late saturday, took a cab since no one was there waiting to collect me at the gate (hey, a guy can dream), and then spent my sunday doin' nuthin' but reading a James Bond novel and nursing a sore foot (I'll be damned if i know what i did to it, but I managed to hurt myself two days before leaving; luckily darvocet is a good way to way to enhance enjoyment of the Magic Kingdom), and cookin' some fine caldo de pollo.

All in all, a way-too-short but very easy, low-key trip.

But let's talk about Pirates.

It's conversations like this that make me like where I work.

My group's director - who's also my long time pal and tattoo soul-mate, Jeff - walked into my office and began:

"The great thing about having a personal trainer is that now, I really have a body"

"Must be nice, man," I replied.

"It's what happens when you work out with an evil lesbian three mornings a week."

"...I have fantasies like that," I said.

"Yeah, I bet you do," said Jeff with an evil laugh, as he walked off down the hall.