dagh!

Directors are dropping like flies!!

Antonioni has died as well, probably after having sex and then regretting it for some reason is my guess. Funny how he was a sexed up intellectual scopophilic version of Bergman, but so damned similar on some levels.

nytimes rather disappointingly only mention's zabriski point's commercial failure, which I guess is what we expect to read about when auteurs get in bed with hollywood - alas, it does no justice to the film itself, just the the business behind it. why should film criticism care? if I want industry money gossip I'll pick up a copy of variety, not the nytimes.

Yes, Lyman writes obits, but they're obits about filmmakers damnit.

gde pepito?

really. this band had a spectacular pop electro album (not that pop nor that electro) that was amazing called "todo cambia" but searching for them on the internets these days is like chasing vapors (which they gave me). que lastima. really though, we need more great music like this. mary and i discovered them at RX gallery on some quick jaunt there with t-dub some years back. it was a GREAT show, grabbed the cd on the way out the door from whence it's been on heavy rotation and then.....

bergman

ingmar bergman is one of those filmmakers that takes a while to understand, a lot like his fellow kroner spending neighbor dryer (a dane to bergman's swedish worldview). funny in certain ways, but I really only started to understand the pace of their filmmaking after reading the amazing (really) piece of scandinavian literature Pan, by knut hamsun (norway, completing the troika).

the humanity unfolds in the space of great silence juxtaposed with the social awkward; self develops through constant kneading, and contact with others is driven by the unknown and the incredible force of brevity of interaction. levity less a dramatic tool than that strange complex and bitter flavor gained from some essential and needed contact with others - yeast that becomes thoughts developed under a moist towel in some dark corner of the hearth.

bergman manages to capture all of this and share it with us in perfectly sating slices, still warm from his oven. film, theater and literature are of course passive, which forces us into the position of silent participant, reacting and internalizing but ultimately as incapable of changing the outcome of the story as we are of changing the antagonists that surround us; we are led to the table to eat what has been made for us.

ingmar bergman has died at 89, it is truly amazing what he accomplished in his life.

you're a fine girl

as if I need to remember CJ to remember you. sheesh. but you need to give me more info if i'm to track you down. was just in chi in that craphole on lake street and thought of you. one of the bright spots from that strange time.

your presents are presents enough

so, this elephant is out of my price range. but i do think it's awesome, and it comes out just after mary's birthday. the red one, duh.

proximity to genius

every once in a while I get to be next to something truly amazing that will forever shape millions of lives. yesterday I learned that my compadre nick chaset has been a part of something beautiful.

i recommend this to everyone.

everyone.

not just because there are some beautiful zingers in there ("If you are a character, then you are the author", "...Trans-1 reveals language's poverty, its inadequate approximations, how a web is made of holes, how the river of words flows always away from us") but also, it pokes fun and embraces structuralism in language. Pierce would be happy, were that possible.

Also note, I linked in a title. never done that before. don't even know if it works. if not, here it is again.

yo, hunter

the reason I was at paper cuts was because the times main page pointed out that hunter s. thompson would be celebrating (with lots of drugs of course) his 70th birthday (or the 70th anniversary of his birth, to be more accurate).

hunter always held a special place in my heat, but mostly because back in the day (oh, this must have been 1991 or so) one mr david grubbs pointed out to me that his father and hunter were school mates and that mr. s. (I will use his middle initial from here on) was tarred and feathered (really! this was kentucky after all) for taking bets against their high school on homecoming.

i love this story for so many reasons. it explains a lot to me about how louisville became what it was (in terms of music in the 80s, and 90s too I guess) as it sort of assimilated into the rest of the world (and as those that assimilated faster fled). it's got this personal element to it. it shows exactly why s. hated the world and loved guns. and of course, it shows how horrifically cow townish and old moneyish that watery kentucky really is.

art is so often made by those that can afford to make it; thank goodness some of them are genuinely challenged by their place in the world and thank extra goodness that some others make it despite real adversity.

if living and breathing were so easy, more of us would be doing it.

(ps, herr burroughs, also fondly remembered from this watery bathosphere)

take this font and shove it

great bit in the nytimes blog on books on notes on type. twee indeed. and totally awesome. sheesh. I hope that link stays good.

hope still

so, there appears still to be hope for government corruption in the united states, if only we follow the lead of china, where being hopelessly corrupt at the highest levels of government charged with protecting the masses results in death. A lesson or two could be learned, though I suspect it won't be.

i've been upgraded

that's right, now there's aram chaos!!!

I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record

so, cops have always and will always protect themselves when it comes to inappropriate violence on the job. this used to be off the job too, but that practice has been in decline for the past 40 years or so (though certainly not gone by any means).

youtube, a great democratizer of media, showed some kids getting messed with by a cop for skateboarding. the cop was cleared of wrong doing by an internal investigation today. for anyone unfamiliar, check it out. The moment that bothers me the most (well, the whole thing bothers me, but this moment was the worst) occurs at about 1:55 in this clip. What you see is a kid yelling at the cop to calm down, a "city employee", who looks a lot like another cop but apparently isn't, grabs the kid, knocking him into the "arresting officer" who goes from choke holding one kid to choke holding two (in the process he slams the backs of their heads together), one of whom has never done anything other than tell the officer to chill out.

so I've been a skateborder of pretty mediocre talent since I was about 12 and have been messed with by cops my entire life for it, as I've matured and grown more respectable and powerful, one thing has become clear, cops hate skateboarders because skateboarders have no respect for cops. The reason skateboarders have no respect for cops is because cops' interactions with skateboarders are mostly ego driven. No matter what cops say, or their defenders, cops mess with skateboarders for two reasons: 1) they can (as evidenced by the review of this particular cop's actions assulting these kids) and 2) they are fundamentally needy people.

now obviously this is a generalization and almost any cop in a real city couldn't be bothered by kids on skateboards who don't like cops and this certainly doesn't apply to them because they actually have real policing duties as opposed to, say, personal inadequacy issues they would rather not work through.

but I'm talking about cops that mess with 14 kids with skateboards.

so guess what? cops will always be able to act like dicks to 14 year olds and the system will always back them up. luckily, I have a lot of faith in 14 year old skateboarders so I know that they will never respect cops for exactly this reason and that is probably the best possible outcome. sure it's a self perpetuating system, but the fault lies not with the kids who are smart enough not to respect that authority, but with the morons that are mistaking their role in the enforecement of actual authority with some personal satisfaction (or amelioration of self doubt and feelings of indequacy) for being in a personally perceived position of authority.

Here's a little tidbit for people incapable of understanding how personal actions relate to trends in society: kids on skateboards are not a problem - you are the problem for not recognizing this. there are real problems in the world and you are almost certainly incapable of fixing them, but do us all a favor and stop creating more of them for those of us that are trying to make a difference.

And to all the cops that have messed with me for being a skateboarder over the course of my life, but mostly during my teen years: I appreciate the fact that you taught me that I never once had to respect you because of who you thought you were or what you thought you represented. Probably the most valuable lesson I could have learned during all those hours spent in the backs of police cars was how useless your ego stroking was for anyone but yourself and how that fact made me more powerful than you would ever be.

connections on the internet

so this web thing is pretty handy. i don't know if you've ever used it, but it can help you do really cool stuff, like get in touch with people you've lost touch with.

this week has been a great week for that for me.

thank you internet.

reusing things

so, I reused some pallets the other day. something that many, many people do (for a living even). and I've always been struck by the few sad street freaks and tweakers who pick up cigarette butts from the sidewalk, but this fine bit from the latimes' 1957 obsessed larry harnisch just takes the cake. why pick up a single cigarette butt, when you can pick up hundreds to resell?

that and a rather insightful comment about art buchwald's lack of funny make this a nice post in my opinion. I have never liked art buchwald's comics, but apparently the man appreciated some sadly funny unfunny stuff in real life and just never executed in a way that was as edgy as, say, real life.

on the topic of mr. harnisch, I am amazed that his job appears to be to read old newspapers, but damnit, it's a fine job, and his clipping service is a service to us all, at least those of us who care about people that resell cigarette butts and crime and gossip from LA's 50s.