I go to the gym. I run, and run. Eminem on the cue, ala recent Detroit. After, in the locker room, the kids from the daycare file in for swimming. They have all their clothes bags that go into lockers, onto which they’ve affixed magnets with their names. A little boy named Joe is dressed faster than any of the others get their suits on, and then he takes the magnets down and plays with them. He moves them all onto one locker and makes shapes. His daycare workers notice and they start yelling at him. Not shrieking, but . . .
JOE, what did you DO?
Joe, you need to ASK.
Now we’ll have to open all the lockers.
We don’t know whose clothes are whose. (I notice that Joe’s bag of clothes, still out on the floor, has his name on it . . . )
Joe changed all the magnets, says one to a new worker who has just come in.
JOE, what did you DO?
JOE, that is VERY VERY BAD.
Joe, why did you DO THAT?, another whines.
Do you know what to do now? Which child should get which clothes?, one asks the little boy.
[Joe is about 3 years old. His face is a robot’s. He is not in this room.]
I can’t believe he did that, what a hassle, says one over his head to another.
Joe, nobody asked you to do that did they? DID THEY?
Joe, are you listening? This is a very bad thing. Everyone open the lockers and pick out which back is yours. [They start to do that, one at a time, all the kids scared to be Joe. They all look at him, or down, and back away.]
He needs to THINK before he ACTS, says the other one back to the first one, disgusted.
JOE . . . starts the 3rd worker . . . . another minute of this passes . . . should I intervene?
[A perky mother of a little girls walks in, HI!]
All three of the workers turn to her, yes Isabelle had a great day, everything is great, all tone changes, sunny sunny. Great. She’s not changed yet, We’re running behind, one of them looks scowlingly at Joe, Mommy Dearest not noticing, not her kid. The scowler looks up, notices me, staring at her. Joe is a few feet from me, leaning against the other wall, staring into space. She looks down. She looks back up. I'm wanting her dead. No, really, for real. If I could call down a bullet, I would, and feel just fine about it. She calls out to the kids, Okay, everyone get in line. They do, Joe last.

the limits of love (v.2)

The background: Ears has a crush on his teacher, The Beootyful Miss Molly.
The context: Watching Shrek2.

Do ugly people fall in love?
Yes [where do you think all the little ugly people come from?]. And they're not ugly, they're ogres.
You're in love with Destiny now, says Ears, teasing.
No I am not. And. She's not ugly, she just has brown skin, and she's the smartest girl. People with brown skin aren't ugly are they?
No, definitely not.
At first Bianka was the smartest, but then I found out she couldn't really read. Now Destiny is the smartest, says The Little Judge.
I thought you were the smartest, says Ears, goading.
I am the smartest boy, Destiny is the smartest girl. I'm still better at reading than any girl.
What is Destiny better at?, I ask.
Talking, girls are always talking when they should be doing their work, says The Judge.
Look (at Shrek), they're in love because they fart together in the mud bath, says Ears. (giggle giggle giggle)
Have you smelled Molly's farts?, asks The Judge of his brother, his turn at tease-bat.
I wish. [lol]

Counting Crows (Shrek 2 sountrack) - Accidentally in Love

the limits of love (v.1?)

It is April 25th. It is snowing.





"Bride Beaten on Her Wedding Night" 4.2006










from Chuck Shepherd's "News of the Weird":

A family has been found in Kurdish Turkey whose members walk on all fours, use the palms of their hands for balance, and stand upright only with difficulty, according to researchers who filmed the family for a March British television show.

[At this point reading this, I thought, wow this testifies to the Will to Love. I mean, what are the chances of two people who walk on all fours finding each other in this wide world? And think of the challenges of eye contact, lack thereof in this case, not to mention the inevitable cultural pressures against them . . . Imagine straightfacing the wedding planner! If they could look up, I mean. I'm about to get a warm fuzzy feeling practically just thinking about it . . . but wait . . . ]

According to Professor Nicholas Humphrey of the London School of Economics, scientists' best guess for the family's condition is that their inbreeding caused the reprise of genetic traits long thought to have been evolutionarily passed over.

[shit. He was her little brother. gross. lol.]

Joy to the World (Jeremiah was a Bullfrog) --[my first favorite song of all time, played endlessly on my Fischer Price turntable]

weekend in The D.

before:





















after:



















"Do it myselps" playlist:

josh cole - women and dreams
suburban kids with biblical names - love will
rachael yamagata - the reason why
the kills - I call it art
bright eyes - the first day of my life
lucinda williams - which will (nick drake cover) link removed

beautiful-and-sunny-with-chance-of-showers playlist:

harry nilsson – are you sleeping
the fray – over my head
jimmie dale gilmore – I’ll never get out of this world alive
elliot smith - twilight-(from a basement on a hill)
built to spill - traces
neko case – dreaming man
land of plenty soundtrack – the weight of the world

meat on the brain

Do people ea barwes in mooseconsin?, he asks around a mouthful of ketchuppy hotdog and a lisp.
Was that, Do people eat bears in Wisconsin?
Yeah . . . How do you say it? (he focuses on my mouth)
Wisconsin.
Miss Conssin, he repeats carefully.
Yeah. And yes, people eat bear meat sometimes, but it doesn't taste very good.
You tasted a bear?
Bear meat. Yeah, it's greasy and gray colored.
Who killed it?
A friend of Grandpa's.
Grandpa says anything you kill you have to eat it, and never kill anything you're not going to eat.
Good plan, that about covers it.
What else did you eat?
Squirrel, a lot.
What does that taste like?
O like rubberbands, but better than possom, which tastes a little like cat pee smells.
What's a possom?
A country rat, sorta.
(paused eating, both staring at me, the curled ick faces)
Did my dad eat bear and squirrels there too?
No, he grew up in a condo.
What's a condo?
It's a house that's attached to other houses, so no room for animals running around much.
What do you eat if you grow up in a condo?
Hot dogs.
That must be where we get it from (whew faces).
Must be.

Stick with ice cream? As of today, the truck started bringing it to the curb, where children stand in panic attacks of delight.

Mr. Softee

Nothing like a car accident to put a holiday into another light.

"God damn. We just had a near life experience." Tyler Durden.

------

In its early stages, insomnia is almost an oasis in which those who have to think or suffer darkly take refuge. Sidonie Colette

O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, that thou no more wilt weigh my eye-lids down and steep my senses in forgetfulness? (Exploding Bill) Shakespeare

The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world. Leonard Cohen.

hmm: The last refuge of the ___________ is a sense of superiority to the ___________ world.

homage to vinyl (v.1)

Barbarella: "I'm here to find Duran Duran."

These Boots Are Made For Walking (video)

Some things really should be resurrected (and some maybe not)-my deep thought for Easter Sunday.

what's the world coming to?

From “Keytracks” review section, Rollingstone.com:

Twenty years after the Smith’s heyday, Moz finally gets laid. Why didn’t anyone think of this before?

It’s just like when you turn on a Bill’s game, and they’re winning, but then start to lose just when you start watching.

-------------------------------------------------------
Then, I read this: The raddest (raddest?) song on the second consecutive album to reassert Prince’s funk bona fides is arresting in part because it is so unassuming. The rad part is a lyric that explicitly invites us to ‘get saved’. Christ is never mentioned, but Prince’s talk of ‘new exaltation’ and ‘streets of gold’ can’t be rationalized away as sex talk . . . The greasy organ R&B of “Satisfied” ‘ain’t talking about nothing physical’. “Incense and Candles” turns on an unusual entreaty: ‘I know you want to take off all your clothes/ But please don’t do it.’

Prince found Jesus and is promoting celibacy? I read the review out to the woman who is cutting my hair. She says, I don’t see the big deal. Was Prince sexy?

Let’s take a listen: Satisfied

If that song is about celibacy, well then Madonna might stand a chance with the Pope.

---------------------------------------
Speaking of whom, rounding out my thoughts for the day of musicians aging and changing and the unsettling affect it might have on the rest of us to witness it . . . What would you provide as a caption to this photo? Here are some of my choices:














Guy Ritchie is a necrophiliac.

Guy’s last girlfriend was a blow-up doll, and well I just wanted to make it work so bad . .

I haven’t been shtooked right once since I got with Mr. Tea and Crumpets.

And lo, uh huh. (Punching out her rabbi is rarely a good sign.)

bonus track: cherish

Spongebob: Patrick!, are you with me or against me?!!
Patrick: Can you give me a hint?

(love that)

-------
From The Beginner, Lynn Hejinian:

This is a good place to begin.
From something.
A little beat of time, a little happiness quite distinct from misery as yet.
The sun shines.
The sun is perceived as a bear, then a boat, then an instruction: see.

Like other beginners, the child makes an array of connections between a large number of people.
I don’t mean that they happen around the child, I’m saying that the child makes them.
A foreshortening, it’s really a form of freedom, it seems so inevitable, so normal, that no one imagines it could have been intended, but in what direction does it go?

No matter how much one prepares, one must take jumps, and I don’t what, because they are so active, to call them unless playful (dramatic) and promising (even more dramatic).
But why jump?

Time matters to experts but it is everything to beginners, who don’t want to get up in the dark unnecessarily any more than anyone else but who don’t want to be left in the dark either, they won’t want to miss out on life, hardly anyone does, though I’m not such a beginner myself as to deny that some do, some come to that, to wanting to be left in the dark, that is, yes.

Everything that’s real is repeated in its new found sense.
We know that limit and surpass it, renaming our integrity.
Now it’s reality.

genre: vignette

"Where Did I Go Wrong?"

She takes her time, turning over all the sandals checking the price. It's spring and the season's shoes are all just out, so the prices are not ones she'll pay. She takes her time anyway, choosing hypothetically what she knows she'll not have, not now anyway, not soon even. She tries on a few pairs, styles she doesn't like so she won't be tempted to purchase, stilletos and platform flip-flops. He waits. Next she wanders into the 'misses' section, where nothing would fit her and the spring-fling color palate of professional wear nauseates. She runs her hands over the fabrics and holds up various 'shells' in lime green and taupe stripe.

“What do you think?”
“Huh?,” he snaps to. “It's hard to tell on the hanger.”

He immediately regrets the statement, as she plainly sees, so she tries things on mercilessly. She won't come out of the dressing room, calling through the door amused accusations, “How could you have thought this might look good?” He wedges the side of his ass at the base of a jaunty manaquin to sit down. Another man waits similarly for his wife, standing dull of face and resting on his own weight like a long-fenced domesticated animal. Here it is men who are turned to pillars of salt.

She walks right past him on her way to the make-up counter, and he notices seconds later and scrambles to catch up to his designated position: trailing. When he catches up, she turns to him and puts sunglasses on his shirtfront, kissing him on the cheek. "Hold these for me, will you?" Then she tests the perfumes and chats with the ugly women whose job it is to spritz customers. Finally, she heads for the door, letting him off the hook. They walk chastely into the parking lot, side by side at a distance.

When they get to the car, she says, "Can you give me the sunglasses?" He takes them off his shirt, noticing the tags.
“Did you just steal these?,” he looks at her appalled.
“No, you did.” She laughs.

He looks back at the mall, aghast, holding the evidence and quickly realizing the impossibility of going back inside to return them. Would he make up a story about accidentally stealing them or try to explain it, that he was on a date and wasn't paying attention . . .? The absurdity of any version of taking the stolen goods back inside daunts him immediately, and then he wonders further if a security guard isn't even now being dispatched to catch him. He's just gotten his first real job! She's watching his face, laughing harder, until the hilarity of his predicament finally warms her. He hands over the glasses, amused despite himself. Slightly.

strep n spongebob on spring break

Why do I keep tripping over Smells Like Teen Spirit, I wonder? That's Willie Nelson covering, and believe it or not, it's great. Short but compelling.

Speaking of Nirvana covers: Johnny Cash - Hurt

I don't care what anyone says, Johnny was good to the last drop.


Pearl: Do you know what that would do to my complexion?! People would mistake me for a planetarium!
Mr Krabbs: What are you talking about?
Pearl: I. Have. No. Idea.

self help reading + music

from The Book of Illusions, Paul Auster:

Dearly Beloved wakes first, and as she opens her eyes and sits up in bed, her face tells us everything--moving rapidly from joy to disbelief to guarded optimism. She springs out of bed and rushes over to Hector. She touches his face (which is dangling backward over the arm of the chair) and Hector's body goes into a spasm of low-voltage shocks, jumping around in a flurry of arms and legs that ultimately lands him in an upright position. Then he opens his eyes. Involuntarily, without seeming to remember that he is supposed to be invisible, he smiles at her. They kiss, but just as their lips come into contact, he recoils in confusion. Is he really there? Has the spell been broken, or is he only dreaming it? He touches his face, he runs his hands over his chest, and he looks her in the eyes. Can you see me?, he asks. Of course I can see you, she says, and as her eyes fill with tears, she leans forward to kiss him again. But he is not convinced. He stands up from his chair and walks over to a mirror hanging on a wall. The proof is in the mirror, and if he is able to see his reflection, he will know that the nightmare is over. That he will see it is a forgone conclusion, but the beautiful thing about that moment is the slowness of his response. . . We are looking at him as he looks at himself, and in this eerie doubling of perspectives, we watch him confront the possibility of his own annihilation. Double or Nothing.

------

beautiful-and-sunny-with-chance-of-showers playlist:

the fray – over my head
jimmie dale gilmore – I’ll never get out of this world alive [kinda catchy?]
the stills – still in love-(logic will break your heart) [late morning clouds pass over]
elliot smith - twilight-(from a basement on a hill) [love this]
built to spill - traces
neko case – dreaming man (neil young cover)
land of plenty soundtrack – the weight of the world [so pretty]

"ears" 4.2006












Jenny Lewis - You Are What You Love

. . . I head off to see Capote in the afternoon, the last place it’s still showing on the big screen, way out at the mall in the sticks. I get there a little early and wander around. I buy a present for a friend. I sit and watch the long line of kids waiting to spin an Easter wheel and get a little basket of crap. I go in to the cinema, behind an elderly couple, her barking at him and him limping along slowly. I notice that he’s sensed me behind him, and is trying to step up the pace. So I stop and turn back for a box of candy I don’t want. Then I sit down front, 25% of the way back from the screen, my preferred percentage of distance. I put my feet up, and as always feel a little spark of gratitude at being small, so I can curl up in a thimble if I have to, and at movies my legs can stretch full out and just reach the tops of the seats in front of me, a foot in the notch to either side. Splayed out and comfy, nobody there to bug me and tell me that people aren’t supposed to sit this way. The movie starts up, and it’s one of the most riveting things I’ve seen in eons. I put my legs down, and lean forward, rest my chin on my forearms, concentrating on it. There is one moment in particular, when the camera is on his face, then on the prisoner’s, then back to his, then to a slow-wider shot of the prisoner as he’s walking, then back to his face again as he is watching the whole of the man. There is no dialogue, but what he is seeing is the prisoner’s jeans cuffed on black boots, if you pay attention and watch the angle of the camera through his eyes. On his face, it falls so very slightly, that he thinks (with aching pity) the 1950’s word: “homo”. Then. What follows is a mutual and amorphous seduction, each of the other’s spirit, full of kindnesses and betrayals so slight they melt in the mouth. Just when you think, when Capote himself thinks, that it is clear which one is growing on which, you’re wrong, he’s wrong, and it unsettles and begins again. Not one single look on his face is repeated or wasted. It's fantastic, and devastating.

I walk out into the sunlight focusing on the effort to remember it all, to repeat it in my head and carve it there. I stop and look at a man waiting for a bus at the stop just outside the doors. I’m not really looking at him, I’m thinking and he’s just there. He’s smoking. Everyone in the film chain-smoked, and now suddenly there is the smell of it. He pops the cigarette into his mouth to free his hands, then gets out the pack and taps one out for me, holds it out in the air between us. I take it and say, I don’t smoke. You looked like you needed one. Did I? Yes, he says, not smiling. I ask, Do you know what bereft means? Can’t say as I do, he says.

Nancy Sinatra – Bang Bang

Iko - Hologram

It's where the heart is, so not that I'd choose to be elsewhere necessarily (well okay, Paris maybe) (or Rome) (for sure London) (okay so a lot of places are probably better), but the dreg of my home has got to be that it snows in April. Which it is doing right now. Sleeting sideways. I can affirm it in its harshness, which most others cannot imagine the compelling aspects of, but it's hard to muster an upbeat soundtrack.

Califone - No Expectations
Calexico - Yours and Mine

FW/SWP

Fallen Woman seeks Single White Pope. Annabella Sciorra on a good day, I know some Latin, a few suggestive phrases in German, and will bring own incense. Into ornate architecture, good liturgy (humor cannot be overvalued), and could wander Rome with my heart on a string. Am seeking empathy, an open mind and heart, and a lack of hypocrisy. Will trade celibacy for absolution (if absolutely necessary).

Damien Rice - The Professor

What are you doing?
Yoga.
Have you gone crazy?
Good question, though unrelated to yoga.
You look weird.
You’re eating an apple sideways with approximately 8 teeth left in your head.
But I have clothes on.
I have clothes on, these are yoga clothes.
You’re practically buck naked.
I am not!, these are yoga shorts.
This is the living room.
You should try it.
Yoga? (curlynose ick look)
No, being half naked in the living room. Big guys all do it while they watch tv.
You mean if I take my pants off you’ll let me watch tv?
(ha, got me) Well, only sports. Big guys watch sports in their underwear.
(drops em, grabs the remote)

Morrissey – To Me You Are a Work of Art
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bonus track – Dear God Please Help Me

i give up

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god damn it shit stupid god damn o great just great the leg came the god damn hell off ok ok just don’t talk to me right now for a second shiiiit (giggle giggle) stop go watch tv just stop give me a second OW! haha the damn thing bit me it won't go the hell back on god damn it ok just wait (giggle transformers make you swear a lot) (she didn't say the f word yet) (almost) how do you almost say the f word? shit let me get the stupid pliers (you almost say it all the time) (and she says it all the time) (they swear in the transformer theme song, TWO TIMES) well maybe that's why they make me swear so much then -- here, and don't transform it again (but but) transformation is overrated trust me (can I someday?) yes someday is a perfect time to transform (a week?) sigh ok a week let's watch the movie so I can listen to the swear words [yup, they say "shit" in the transformers movie theme song]




"crosswise" - whoever invented transformers should be shot dead in the street






g2 theme - Paul Oakenfold produced this, almost as big of a shock as Orson Welles playing Unicron. Still, since I knew who both those men were already, and knew how to swear, I can't see as I'm getting much out of this. Back to straightfoward action figures.

bonus track- Even Better Than the Real Thing (U2), the first significant Oakenfold production of many.

A literary mind is an inevitable thing to waste. - DmS

from Teaching Hamlet: What it Feels Like for a Girl:

Meanwhile, often overlooked as the real tragedy, there is Ophelia. Before his haunting visions of vulnerability and betrayal make a bludgeoning tool of Hamlet, she knew him and admired him and she sometimes held his hand. She is brought as bait to tempt him to reveal himself, but she knows (she thinks she knows) that that would be impossible, that the dark and dangerous mind that they all want to flush into the open does not actually exist in Hamlet. So standing there, she expects to see only the man she knows. Wouldn’t any of us? She’s never seen any other in him: “He hath importun’d me with love/ in honourable fashion.” He does not resist going to her, but he is armed to the hilt now with gloom. He knows that already, and despises her for not knowing it and for thus standing there like a slab to his blade. She pleads (but but . . ), and in doing so she bares her throat to his slicing of her, down to size:

Get thee to a nunnery: . . . I am very
proud, revengeful, ambitious, with more offences at
my beck than I have thoughts to put them in,
imagination to give them shape, or time to act them
in. What should such fellows as I do crawling
between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves,
all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery
. . . . or if thou wilt needs marry,
marry a fool; for wise men know well enough
what monsters you make of them.

“Get thee to a nunnery,” he hisses close to her face as she meets his eyes.

He is righteous, only being “cruel to be kind”, then he retreats. She stares into the space where the man she used to know used to be, racked with mourning. She caves in around the mortal wound she’s taken, (“Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me/ To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”) and she drifts from the stage as others continue chatting. She is a Dead (want) Woman Walking, and she knows it, the first fatality of his unrelenting despair. She dies slowly, knowing and knowing. She talks to the air, her half of their conversations, wincing from anyone else taking up the response. Finally, she crumples into her own trembling reflection, unable either to comfort herself or to save her lover from disappearing into the man who flays. She did it. She bared her throat and sealed both their fates. She becomes the woman distorted in the current. But like Noah’s dove, she does not stop and drown soon enough to prevent the world from having begun.

Gortoz A Ran-J'Attends - Danez Prigent & Lisa Gerrard