8.29.2005
ten good things
10. celebrities that sneak around my store on the down-low, but get recognized regardless.
9. watching kinsey with my mom. now, i won't lie-- enduring endless statistics about males masturbating 700 hundred times a day (in a hundred million sordid ways) was no picnic, being next to the woman that birthed me and all... but it enabled a nice dialogue when it was over-- one that speaks well of the film's mature handling of troublesome topics. the experience was a clear sign of how much my family has changed over the years... for the better.
8. senator barbara boxer. if you click on my petition posts, you might recognize that name. i get a lot of activism emails from her, urging me to support all sorts of decent causes. her commitment to mobilizing the progressive base of this country has a near-republican sense of diligence and organization (which are the only two fronts upon which "republican" should drum up positive feelings of any sort).
7. selma blair on late night tv. though i've pretty much eliminated non-movie-related tv time, i tend to eat my dinner in front of late night talk shows. and occasionally, a truly strange person will drop by for an interview. selma blair was on leno the other night, and she could best be described as a bumbling, bawdy mess. but an intelligent mess. blair seems aware of her messiness and amused by it, but not in a canned sort of way (even if bits of the dialogue were obviously pre-meditated). her conversations always digress... she tells stories that go gloriously nowhere... she makes the audience totally uncomfortable... she's awesome.
6. i've been telling everyone i know to see gregory la cava's 1937 film stage door, so i might as well plug it here too. la cava combines the memorable characters and crisp dialogue of a top-notch "screwball" comedy with the naturalistic, lyrical orchestration of a renoir ensemble pic. instead of formulaic basics like plot and conflict, stage door is essentially one long, over-lapping conversation. its feminist flavor is as irresistible as everything else, and harbors none of the virginal martyrdom crap that screws up progressive pictures of the time. ginger rogers flaunts the razor sharp wit of a groucho marx while maintaining the tenderness of a dimensional human being, and katherine hepburn is as charming as always, dahhh-ling!
5. the angels of light feature the work of michael gira, who is more famously known as a member of the swans. gira uses "the angels" to explore the sort of nouveau folk made popular by people like will oldham, jason molina, and his own personal discovery-- devendra banhart. but what separates gira from such comparative newbies is a pervasive and alluring sickness that (undoubtedly) carries over from the swans. his heartache has a distinctly bitter ring to it, and a different sort of urgency than that of recent indie fare. the arrangements are always strange and surprising, as are the variety of tones his albums tend to take. they have mood swings; they turn from violent to contemplative, and vice versa. the dude has quite a range.
4.
brad dourif in deadwood, not unlike marky mark in i heart huckabees, is a perfect, comic embodiment of the torture accompanying "the ethical life." i just finished the dvds of the show's first season (i am cable-less, so no spoilers please!), wherein dourif portrays the town doctor. deadwood is a show largely devoted to a series of unlikely "mother" figures, and dourif is my personal fave of the bunch. the town's hysterical need for his services puts him in the unpleasant position of one who knows everything. no clandestine act of bullying or embarrassing, venereal illness escapes his gaze, and he does what he can without huffy judgment. dourif, with his sleepless stare and gruff persona, appears plagued by the amount of info he has privy to. he sees the world in all its bountiful complexity, which drowns him in a diplomatic ambivalence allowing no relief. and awful as it sounds, it's hilarious. if there is a lesson to learn from his character, it is surely that being a good person will drive you completely insane. but his performance as an actor-- and the affection the show's writers devote to characters like his-- lets in a glimmer of hope once in a while as well. so you laugh instead of cry.
3. i am, as a rule, opposed to parents who go and "hipster it up" with their children, but:
... angelina jolie's mohawked son is so goddamn adorable that i have to make an exception.
2. fruit. it fills you up. it gives you energy. if you didn't get enough sleep, it de-zombifies you. i've been eating a lot of it. it's good.
(sidenote: i didn't make the above dish. google image search made it. it's pretty though, no?)
1. the roberta flack version of "hey, that's no way to say goodbye" is nearly as beautiful as the original (which i've decided is one of my favorite songs of all time). it's a lighter, hazier rendering-- told with a much different breed of melancholy than cohen's. the transformation is complete enough, however, that it doesn't interfere with the original. it compliments it, and it does so beautifully.
9. watching kinsey with my mom. now, i won't lie-- enduring endless statistics about males masturbating 700 hundred times a day (in a hundred million sordid ways) was no picnic, being next to the woman that birthed me and all... but it enabled a nice dialogue when it was over-- one that speaks well of the film's mature handling of troublesome topics. the experience was a clear sign of how much my family has changed over the years... for the better.
8. senator barbara boxer. if you click on my petition posts, you might recognize that name. i get a lot of activism emails from her, urging me to support all sorts of decent causes. her commitment to mobilizing the progressive base of this country has a near-republican sense of diligence and organization (which are the only two fronts upon which "republican" should drum up positive feelings of any sort).
7. selma blair on late night tv. though i've pretty much eliminated non-movie-related tv time, i tend to eat my dinner in front of late night talk shows. and occasionally, a truly strange person will drop by for an interview. selma blair was on leno the other night, and she could best be described as a bumbling, bawdy mess. but an intelligent mess. blair seems aware of her messiness and amused by it, but not in a canned sort of way (even if bits of the dialogue were obviously pre-meditated). her conversations always digress... she tells stories that go gloriously nowhere... she makes the audience totally uncomfortable... she's awesome.
6. i've been telling everyone i know to see gregory la cava's 1937 film stage door, so i might as well plug it here too. la cava combines the memorable characters and crisp dialogue of a top-notch "screwball" comedy with the naturalistic, lyrical orchestration of a renoir ensemble pic. instead of formulaic basics like plot and conflict, stage door is essentially one long, over-lapping conversation. its feminist flavor is as irresistible as everything else, and harbors none of the virginal martyrdom crap that screws up progressive pictures of the time. ginger rogers flaunts the razor sharp wit of a groucho marx while maintaining the tenderness of a dimensional human being, and katherine hepburn is as charming as always, dahhh-ling!
5. the angels of light feature the work of michael gira, who is more famously known as a member of the swans. gira uses "the angels" to explore the sort of nouveau folk made popular by people like will oldham, jason molina, and his own personal discovery-- devendra banhart. but what separates gira from such comparative newbies is a pervasive and alluring sickness that (undoubtedly) carries over from the swans. his heartache has a distinctly bitter ring to it, and a different sort of urgency than that of recent indie fare. the arrangements are always strange and surprising, as are the variety of tones his albums tend to take. they have mood swings; they turn from violent to contemplative, and vice versa. the dude has quite a range.
4.
brad dourif in deadwood, not unlike marky mark in i heart huckabees, is a perfect, comic embodiment of the torture accompanying "the ethical life." i just finished the dvds of the show's first season (i am cable-less, so no spoilers please!), wherein dourif portrays the town doctor. deadwood is a show largely devoted to a series of unlikely "mother" figures, and dourif is my personal fave of the bunch. the town's hysterical need for his services puts him in the unpleasant position of one who knows everything. no clandestine act of bullying or embarrassing, venereal illness escapes his gaze, and he does what he can without huffy judgment. dourif, with his sleepless stare and gruff persona, appears plagued by the amount of info he has privy to. he sees the world in all its bountiful complexity, which drowns him in a diplomatic ambivalence allowing no relief. and awful as it sounds, it's hilarious. if there is a lesson to learn from his character, it is surely that being a good person will drive you completely insane. but his performance as an actor-- and the affection the show's writers devote to characters like his-- lets in a glimmer of hope once in a while as well. so you laugh instead of cry.
3. i am, as a rule, opposed to parents who go and "hipster it up" with their children, but:
... angelina jolie's mohawked son is so goddamn adorable that i have to make an exception.
2. fruit. it fills you up. it gives you energy. if you didn't get enough sleep, it de-zombifies you. i've been eating a lot of it. it's good.
(sidenote: i didn't make the above dish. google image search made it. it's pretty though, no?)
1. the roberta flack version of "hey, that's no way to say goodbye" is nearly as beautiful as the original (which i've decided is one of my favorite songs of all time). it's a lighter, hazier rendering-- told with a much different breed of melancholy than cohen's. the transformation is complete enough, however, that it doesn't interfere with the original. it compliments it, and it does so beautifully.
