Monday, February 14, 2011
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Monday, September 07, 2009
The Heat
It's finally hot in LA. It seemed to take forever this year. Overcast and lukewarm every day week after week.
But no, it's hot, in that slight-emergency way. Sleeping with an ice pack. All the windows down in the car. Maggots in the garbage.
On Friday night I drove all the way from my house to downtown on 3rd in Labor Day weekend Friday evening traffic. Everyone was out on the streets, walking up and down the sidewalks, sitting on front stairs, sitting on bikes, Grandmas holding ice cream cones for babies. Music. Why would anyone ever wear anything other than a tank top, ever? I went swimming in the ocean yesterday, diving under big waves, popping through the glassy ones just before they broke. Apart from finding sand in my ears the next day, I'm wondering: why don't I do this every Saturday?
Yesterday I rode my bike to the Larchmont Farmers market to buy tiny strawberries and baba ganoush. By the time I rode back, it was noon and so blindingly hot. I passed some side yards with trees and bushes and flowers and damp moss and the smell was of heaven and I thought about swimming in rivers the rest of the way until I got home and had a drink of water.
But no, it's hot, in that slight-emergency way. Sleeping with an ice pack. All the windows down in the car. Maggots in the garbage.
On Friday night I drove all the way from my house to downtown on 3rd in Labor Day weekend Friday evening traffic. Everyone was out on the streets, walking up and down the sidewalks, sitting on front stairs, sitting on bikes, Grandmas holding ice cream cones for babies. Music. Why would anyone ever wear anything other than a tank top, ever? I went swimming in the ocean yesterday, diving under big waves, popping through the glassy ones just before they broke. Apart from finding sand in my ears the next day, I'm wondering: why don't I do this every Saturday?
Yesterday I rode my bike to the Larchmont Farmers market to buy tiny strawberries and baba ganoush. By the time I rode back, it was noon and so blindingly hot. I passed some side yards with trees and bushes and flowers and damp moss and the smell was of heaven and I thought about swimming in rivers the rest of the way until I got home and had a drink of water.
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Bug Life
Maggots in the trash can again, it's like they follow me.
And the crickets that jump inside the apartment and then sing their loud evening cricket song, right next to the wall by the corner of the couch, loud. It's only when they pause for stretching that you realize: how loud!
It's a distinct time of year, these days when summer is ready to collapse into fall, wringing out the last of our energy with its heat, not sharp heat like July, more a dull boring heat like a mole in a hill and I'm thinking about being another year older again.
And the crickets that jump inside the apartment and then sing their loud evening cricket song, right next to the wall by the corner of the couch, loud. It's only when they pause for stretching that you realize: how loud!
It's a distinct time of year, these days when summer is ready to collapse into fall, wringing out the last of our energy with its heat, not sharp heat like July, more a dull boring heat like a mole in a hill and I'm thinking about being another year older again.
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
More Volvo Love
I drove a rental car for the last two days because my car was in the shop having failed the smog test. It got to have a sleepover with the other Volvos.
The rental car I drove was a Nissan Sentra. It was red, at least. And not (sorry American car makers) American. But I felt like I was driving a kleenex box with power windows around. Who can stand to drive this car all the time? It's got no weight to it, is boxy as all get out and the bars (I'm sure there's a technical term for it, I don't know what it is) on either side of the windshield could not have been more huge or more totally in the way of seeing the road. It was zippy to drive and I enjoyed not having to be a total precious wimp about going over potholes, but how zippy do you really want an enormous kleenex box to be, really?
The radio does not work in my car, so I was listening to the radio in some horrible 405 morning commute traffic (who can do that every day? It must kill part of your soul) and here's what I've been missing:
1) shite RnB song about "ooo, ooh, in the hotel room, the hotel room, yeah girl, in the hotel room, mm, mm, here come the egg whites"
2) talk radio with Ashton Kutcher talking about doing a sex scene with an actress but finding her feet to be gross and talking at length about how gross they were and how he asked people to cover them up in the scene.
3) talk radio about how Brad Pitt was spotted getting McDonald's drive-through and it was the second time in as many weeks
Finally I found a station playing Fleetwood Mac. The next song isn't bad either. The station ID comes on: it's the oldies station.
Here's the thing that I realized bugged me the most though: I didn't like driving that car because it wasn't cool. The Volvo may not be a Porsche, but that car has character and style. It is distinctive in parking lots. I feel cool when I'm driving it. I even feel cool having a tape collection. As cars go, that's like have a record player in your automobile. I like the heaviness of the Volvo and the low slung seats and when I drive it, I have perfect zen with what it can do as a machine and the space it takes up because I've been driving it for eleven years.
Anyway, nice try Sentra, I'll be driving the Volvo into the ground.
The rental car I drove was a Nissan Sentra. It was red, at least. And not (sorry American car makers) American. But I felt like I was driving a kleenex box with power windows around. Who can stand to drive this car all the time? It's got no weight to it, is boxy as all get out and the bars (I'm sure there's a technical term for it, I don't know what it is) on either side of the windshield could not have been more huge or more totally in the way of seeing the road. It was zippy to drive and I enjoyed not having to be a total precious wimp about going over potholes, but how zippy do you really want an enormous kleenex box to be, really?
The radio does not work in my car, so I was listening to the radio in some horrible 405 morning commute traffic (who can do that every day? It must kill part of your soul) and here's what I've been missing:
1) shite RnB song about "ooo, ooh, in the hotel room, the hotel room, yeah girl, in the hotel room, mm, mm, here come the egg whites"
2) talk radio with Ashton Kutcher talking about doing a sex scene with an actress but finding her feet to be gross and talking at length about how gross they were and how he asked people to cover them up in the scene.
3) talk radio about how Brad Pitt was spotted getting McDonald's drive-through and it was the second time in as many weeks
Finally I found a station playing Fleetwood Mac. The next song isn't bad either. The station ID comes on: it's the oldies station.
Here's the thing that I realized bugged me the most though: I didn't like driving that car because it wasn't cool. The Volvo may not be a Porsche, but that car has character and style. It is distinctive in parking lots. I feel cool when I'm driving it. I even feel cool having a tape collection. As cars go, that's like have a record player in your automobile. I like the heaviness of the Volvo and the low slung seats and when I drive it, I have perfect zen with what it can do as a machine and the space it takes up because I've been driving it for eleven years.
Anyway, nice try Sentra, I'll be driving the Volvo into the ground.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A photograph plus a photograph plus a photograph is life.
I think everyone with a digital camera has to come to terms with how many photos you end up taking because of how easy it is to keep snapping away.
It creates organizational problems, but it also makes for this woman's work. Also the idea for what kind of photograph you take of what kind of thing.
Also, there are crotch shots.
It creates organizational problems, but it also makes for this woman's work. Also the idea for what kind of photograph you take of what kind of thing.
Also, there are crotch shots.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Goodwill, July 25th, 2009
High-waisted houndstooth wool pencil skirt from Banana Republic, $4.99.
Still mourning the violently purple pencil skirt that was a mite too small. God, it was beautiful.
Still mourning the violently purple pencil skirt that was a mite too small. God, it was beautiful.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
We both agree that it's delicious and healthy
Say what you will about Bruno, it did set me off on a hummus kick.
Monday, July 20, 2009
You Built A Time Machine Out of a Car
When I was a teenager I went to a drama festival and the head adjudicator was this really wonderful stage actor Scott Bellis. I can't even remember what play we put up, or maybe I was just watching a friend's play. Anyway, when he got up at the end of the festival to talk about the plays, he stood there on the empty black box stage and walked around a bit and said, "You can do anything up here". And I had one of those profound moments when you are a teenager where that information suddenly seems like the newest piece of insight ever at the same time that it's something that you've know all along, and a whole world opens up.
I was already really into theatre, but thinking of the revelation of that moment made me return again and again to loving plays and how they create whole worlds in infinite succession on a tired old piece of black stage. Because it wasn't just that he said that, but also that he made it true the moment he said it.
And when I find things like this online, I feel that way all over again.
Because holy shit, this guy is amazing! Do people help him? His friends from high school? Does he work in a pay parking booth and write all the music at work (by the way, strongly recommend working in a pay parking booth if you need to get some desk work done)?
I love the internet for letting this guy make this stuff and letting us all see it. It's the best kind of nonsense, just like movies and plays and Van Gogh and Rolling Stone lyrics and the bible.
I was already really into theatre, but thinking of the revelation of that moment made me return again and again to loving plays and how they create whole worlds in infinite succession on a tired old piece of black stage. Because it wasn't just that he said that, but also that he made it true the moment he said it.
And when I find things like this online, I feel that way all over again.
Because holy shit, this guy is amazing! Do people help him? His friends from high school? Does he work in a pay parking booth and write all the music at work (by the way, strongly recommend working in a pay parking booth if you need to get some desk work done)?
I love the internet for letting this guy make this stuff and letting us all see it. It's the best kind of nonsense, just like movies and plays and Van Gogh and Rolling Stone lyrics and the bible.
Monday, July 06, 2009
The Tragically Hip, June 10th at the Troubadour
Sarah and I got there, having scored choice street parking (which was available because in typical LA fashion, we had to spend five minutes deciphering the logic problem of the six parking regulation signs to figure out if it was legal or not). To the wiliest go the parking spoils.
We got drinks, the place was pretty full, we looked around at all the other people in LA who would come out to a Hip show. At one point someone barely grazed my elbow from behind and immediately said, “Sorry” (Soh-ree, not saw-ree). A few minutes later, I stepped back to put my empty glass on the bar and someone leaning against the bar took it out of my hands and put it there for me. In that moment I knew: I was amongst more Canadians in one place than I had probably ever been outside of Canada.
The Troubadour is known for promptness and sure enough, they did not dilly-dally when it came to getting the show on stage. I and my day job appreciated that a lot. No one opened: no one needed to.
Now, I haven’t been following these guys lately. The last album I bought was Music At Work, which I didn’t really listen to much. I hadn’t listened to Phantom Power for ages; I didn’t even have it on my computer. Trouble At the Henhouse (apart from being one of my favorite album titles (Dongs of Sevotion being a close contender)) I’d listen to occasionally. In high school we all listened to Day For Night exhaustively, and Fully Completely got the most radio play. Once, on a road trip from Vancouver to Prince George in which everyone forgot to bring music, I purchased the cassette tape of Up To Here in 100 Mile House, which we then listened to from there to PG and all the way back to Vancouver on a loop until we couldn’t take it anymore.
All this to say that I haven’t heard their new stuff. And it’s a tour; they have to play a lot of the new stuff to keep the people happy/buying albums, I get that. The new stuff was a little too happy and mellow and dreamy for me. But they are dads now and stuff, so they, like Joni Mitchell, have looked at clouds from both sides now.
Mr. Gord Downie is still the most creative person on stage that I’ve ever seen. Bob Dylan takes the prize for most outrageous reinvention of his own songs on stage, but he can’t hold a candle to Gord’s physical imaginationings. It’s like when he’s making music something else takes over and it’s kind of dance and kind of performance art and it’s a little silly at times, but it always actually makes sense. His head is shaved bald and he had a white towel for wiping it. He’d go through a towel ever couple of minutes – the used ones would get tossed into the crowd (hm) and then a roadie offstage would toss him a fresh one. Are there eight million ways to catch a towel that’s being tossed to you? I now think that there are. Are there four hundred million ways to wipe your sweaty head? Indefinitely. Including singing whole songs with the towel covering your face.
Yes, they played: Grace, Too (with the “Well I’m tragically hip” lyric swapped in), Locked In The Trunk of a Car, Gift Shop, Ahead By A Century, Springtime In Vienna, Poets, Thompson Girl (so pretty). They played Bobcaygeon, which I never liked as much before, partly cause on the album there’s a bit of a easy-listening feel to it, flutes or something. They played it as straight up rock, a little harsh, and it was more beautiful than I’d ever noticed before. It was the musical equivalent of the plain girl in the movie who takes off her glasses and reveals herself as gorgeous. “Coulda been the Willie Nelson, coulda been the wine.”
And they played Nautical Disaster, which even if everything else was crap, would have made the night worthwhile. There is something about the years I was 17, 18, 19 contained in that song, some kind of worldview that it has. The fingernails on the hull. The kind of logic that will get you hated.
Yes, the Canadianness is a big part of it for me, especially now. And there’s a nostalgia element involved. But the Hip have this acuteness in their lyrics that you hardly ever find in music, especially popular music. I wonder how much of the magic of the line: “Maybe a prostitute/Could teach you/How to take a compliment” lands for their more meathead fanbase. Or “Sleepwalk/So fast asleep/In the motel/That has the lay of home”. Setting the scene with “Sled dogs after dinner/Close their eyes on the howling waste/Kurt Cobain reincarnated/Sighs and licks his face”. It’s possible Gord is right about “A generation so much dumber than its parents/Came crashing through the window”.
Have fallen in love with Fireworks:
If there’s a goal that everyone remembers
It was back in ol’ 72
We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger
And all I remember is sitting beside you.
You said you didn’t give a fuck about hockey
Well I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr.
Never read his book of poems, and it’s possible it may not be as good when it’s not sung out with guitars and drums and the ziiiing feeling of a solid pop hook, but when you add that stuff it’s pretty intoxicating.
And then they signed off and we filed out into the night, sweaty and with a tinnitus ring: souvenirs of a good night.
We got drinks, the place was pretty full, we looked around at all the other people in LA who would come out to a Hip show. At one point someone barely grazed my elbow from behind and immediately said, “Sorry” (Soh-ree, not saw-ree). A few minutes later, I stepped back to put my empty glass on the bar and someone leaning against the bar took it out of my hands and put it there for me. In that moment I knew: I was amongst more Canadians in one place than I had probably ever been outside of Canada.
The Troubadour is known for promptness and sure enough, they did not dilly-dally when it came to getting the show on stage. I and my day job appreciated that a lot. No one opened: no one needed to.
Now, I haven’t been following these guys lately. The last album I bought was Music At Work, which I didn’t really listen to much. I hadn’t listened to Phantom Power for ages; I didn’t even have it on my computer. Trouble At the Henhouse (apart from being one of my favorite album titles (Dongs of Sevotion being a close contender)) I’d listen to occasionally. In high school we all listened to Day For Night exhaustively, and Fully Completely got the most radio play. Once, on a road trip from Vancouver to Prince George in which everyone forgot to bring music, I purchased the cassette tape of Up To Here in 100 Mile House, which we then listened to from there to PG and all the way back to Vancouver on a loop until we couldn’t take it anymore.
All this to say that I haven’t heard their new stuff. And it’s a tour; they have to play a lot of the new stuff to keep the people happy/buying albums, I get that. The new stuff was a little too happy and mellow and dreamy for me. But they are dads now and stuff, so they, like Joni Mitchell, have looked at clouds from both sides now.
Mr. Gord Downie is still the most creative person on stage that I’ve ever seen. Bob Dylan takes the prize for most outrageous reinvention of his own songs on stage, but he can’t hold a candle to Gord’s physical imaginationings. It’s like when he’s making music something else takes over and it’s kind of dance and kind of performance art and it’s a little silly at times, but it always actually makes sense. His head is shaved bald and he had a white towel for wiping it. He’d go through a towel ever couple of minutes – the used ones would get tossed into the crowd (hm) and then a roadie offstage would toss him a fresh one. Are there eight million ways to catch a towel that’s being tossed to you? I now think that there are. Are there four hundred million ways to wipe your sweaty head? Indefinitely. Including singing whole songs with the towel covering your face.
Yes, they played: Grace, Too (with the “Well I’m tragically hip” lyric swapped in), Locked In The Trunk of a Car, Gift Shop, Ahead By A Century, Springtime In Vienna, Poets, Thompson Girl (so pretty). They played Bobcaygeon, which I never liked as much before, partly cause on the album there’s a bit of a easy-listening feel to it, flutes or something. They played it as straight up rock, a little harsh, and it was more beautiful than I’d ever noticed before. It was the musical equivalent of the plain girl in the movie who takes off her glasses and reveals herself as gorgeous. “Coulda been the Willie Nelson, coulda been the wine.”
And they played Nautical Disaster, which even if everything else was crap, would have made the night worthwhile. There is something about the years I was 17, 18, 19 contained in that song, some kind of worldview that it has. The fingernails on the hull. The kind of logic that will get you hated.
Yes, the Canadianness is a big part of it for me, especially now. And there’s a nostalgia element involved. But the Hip have this acuteness in their lyrics that you hardly ever find in music, especially popular music. I wonder how much of the magic of the line: “Maybe a prostitute/Could teach you/How to take a compliment” lands for their more meathead fanbase. Or “Sleepwalk/So fast asleep/In the motel/That has the lay of home”. Setting the scene with “Sled dogs after dinner/Close their eyes on the howling waste/Kurt Cobain reincarnated/Sighs and licks his face”. It’s possible Gord is right about “A generation so much dumber than its parents/Came crashing through the window”.
Have fallen in love with Fireworks:
If there’s a goal that everyone remembers
It was back in ol’ 72
We all squeezed the stick and we all pulled the trigger
And all I remember is sitting beside you.
You said you didn’t give a fuck about hockey
Well I never saw someone say that before
You held my hand and we walked home the long way
You were loosening my grip on Bobby Orr.
Never read his book of poems, and it’s possible it may not be as good when it’s not sung out with guitars and drums and the ziiiing feeling of a solid pop hook, but when you add that stuff it’s pretty intoxicating.
And then they signed off and we filed out into the night, sweaty and with a tinnitus ring: souvenirs of a good night.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Tonight You Belong To Me
When my old roommate Rebecca moved off to Jordan, she left a lot of stuff in the house for me to use, including one of her ukuleles. I played guitar a bit when I was a kid so it wasn't hard to pick it up and thanks to the internet, it's not hard to learn the basic adjustments of uke versus guitar. I played a song to my mom over the phone, which she complained about, because I played it really badly. But when I was up in Vancouver recently, she asked me why I don't play that song from The Jerk.
On looking for it, I found this girl, who is hopefully no longer posting stuff on YouTube because she's working on an album, because wowie geez is her voice pretty. Pretty song too. Now I just have to learn this tune and find a fellow who plays the trumpet to walk along the beach with me.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Proposal, or: The Worst Possible Way to Stay In The Country
How excited am I for this movie? A Canadian played by an American forces an American played by a Canadian to marry her so she can stay in America. And don't pretend the casting isn't part of the joke: for me the casting is the whole joke, expecially when RR starts making dumb American jokes about Canada. Directed by a choreograher.
Also, I would see any movie with Sandra Bullock.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Trustifarians Eating Ramen
This is from a while ago, but I can’t not post it, because I think it’s too hilarious.
Did none of these people read into the moral lessons behind Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? I’m all for parents helping their struggling kids out and it being hard to be a young person struggling to get ahead, but give me a freaking break. If you’re twentysomething and you want to break into the [pretentious career] industry, be a scrapper and do it! Don’t take summers off, don’t spend all your money on ridiculous shoes and twenty dollar martinis (NYC can be an asshole about that) and then balk at working a shit job for 8 hours in a row. If you are the parent of such a person, cut them off.
The film industry, for one, is full of people who are trying to work in it or who do work in it who don’t care that much about movies and aren’t really interested in shutting up, working hard, and getting the job done. Of course, there are people who DO care about movies, who DO shut up and work hard and get the job done and those people are freaking DIAMONDS. And they do not spend very long working shitty jobs. Getting ahead in film is like a zen paradox: love washing the coffee cups and then you won’t have to do it for very long.
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