Friday, June 06, 2008
Can I Borrow Your Bobcat Teeth
Turns out you can borrow stuff from the Natural History Museum in LA as long as you're a member of the museum. This is kind of awesome. I'll take a stuffed lynx or raccoon (only if it's in the process of climbing up a branch), a bunch of mounted bugs and some very old piece of gold panning equipment, please.
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
For Seminar Today
In discussion with various people and in no particular order, the top 5 American contributions to the world:
1) Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
2) Hamburgers
3) Disney
4) Jazz
5) Westerns
Discuss.
1) Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
2) Hamburgers
3) Disney
4) Jazz
5) Westerns
Discuss.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Guest Photographer
Remember being three? Me neither. Here's what it looks like, though:
Cousin Steve
Auntie Valerie
Some people you are related to, hopefully getting you some hotdogs.
Cousin Robyn and the back end of Uncle Kim
Dad
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
The Writers
A month ago I went to the Festival of Books at UCLA.
Discovery one: taking the bus from Santa Monica on an idyllic Saturday morning is delightful.
Discovery two: UCLA's campus is pretty- prettier than USC's. The brick-obsessed architecture is more ornate, for one, and for two, there are grassy hills to sit on with shade trees. Maybe it's because I grew up on a hillside so hilly my middle school was named Hillside, but a place never seems properly landscaped without a few steep inclines. The entire area we were walking around was filled with glorious sunshine and the smell of hamburgers.
I'm always curious to see writers, partly out of what Margaret Atwood labels perversity. I want to know what these people look like who make a living out of getting their thoughts down on paper in such a way that people want to read them. Really, there are very few people who manage to do that.
The panels were mostly kind of weird, because the writers themselves are kind of weird, and not weird in the same way. Also because they are up against a roomful of people, some of whom are hoping to catch certain writers after the panel and have a 45 minute conversation with them. So really there were only particular moments of panel discussion in which the writers really got down to it on certain issues and some interesting ideas got thrown around. Not as much of a torrent of interesting ideas that I was hoping for, but a handful nonetheless.
There seemed also to be a number of writers who were pretty interested in their cultural errand or some kind of responsibility to talk from a place of being disenfranchised or poor or (in a particularly LA turn) non-drivers. Every panel I went to brought up Hollywood movies and talked about them with mostly disdain. There were a couple of writers who were good enough to have more expansive thoughts on the politics of demographics and that was pretty enjoyable. Maybe it's because a lot of them got English degrees like I did, but most of them seemed pretty intent on fixing something about the world, or at least embodying a voice that, quote, needs to be heard, unquote. It's not so much that I think those voices don't need to be heard, it's more that people self-identifying as fringe has started to feel like such a popular thing to do that it's become necessary to a certain kind of authorial identity. "I'm worth listening to not because I speak from inside the center, but because of my socially underprivileged but artistically privileged viewpoint outside of it". I'd argue (and Shakespeare would back me up) that the center doesn't actually exist anyway, except in our minds when we think about how we are outside of it. I wish people would just shut up and tell whatever story they have it in them to tell without mapping their own cultural value. If it's a "story that needs to be heard" then it will have its own value. All this positioning feels like listening to someone talk who is at the same time pointing at themselves with both hands.
Discovery one: taking the bus from Santa Monica on an idyllic Saturday morning is delightful.
Discovery two: UCLA's campus is pretty- prettier than USC's. The brick-obsessed architecture is more ornate, for one, and for two, there are grassy hills to sit on with shade trees. Maybe it's because I grew up on a hillside so hilly my middle school was named Hillside, but a place never seems properly landscaped without a few steep inclines. The entire area we were walking around was filled with glorious sunshine and the smell of hamburgers.
I'm always curious to see writers, partly out of what Margaret Atwood labels perversity. I want to know what these people look like who make a living out of getting their thoughts down on paper in such a way that people want to read them. Really, there are very few people who manage to do that.
The panels were mostly kind of weird, because the writers themselves are kind of weird, and not weird in the same way. Also because they are up against a roomful of people, some of whom are hoping to catch certain writers after the panel and have a 45 minute conversation with them. So really there were only particular moments of panel discussion in which the writers really got down to it on certain issues and some interesting ideas got thrown around. Not as much of a torrent of interesting ideas that I was hoping for, but a handful nonetheless.
There seemed also to be a number of writers who were pretty interested in their cultural errand or some kind of responsibility to talk from a place of being disenfranchised or poor or (in a particularly LA turn) non-drivers. Every panel I went to brought up Hollywood movies and talked about them with mostly disdain. There were a couple of writers who were good enough to have more expansive thoughts on the politics of demographics and that was pretty enjoyable. Maybe it's because a lot of them got English degrees like I did, but most of them seemed pretty intent on fixing something about the world, or at least embodying a voice that, quote, needs to be heard, unquote. It's not so much that I think those voices don't need to be heard, it's more that people self-identifying as fringe has started to feel like such a popular thing to do that it's become necessary to a certain kind of authorial identity. "I'm worth listening to not because I speak from inside the center, but because of my socially underprivileged but artistically privileged viewpoint outside of it". I'd argue (and Shakespeare would back me up) that the center doesn't actually exist anyway, except in our minds when we think about how we are outside of it. I wish people would just shut up and tell whatever story they have it in them to tell without mapping their own cultural value. If it's a "story that needs to be heard" then it will have its own value. All this positioning feels like listening to someone talk who is at the same time pointing at themselves with both hands.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Vancouver Chat Poem
by artists formerly residing in Vancouver
me: o burnaby, you are lost to me
the train tracks
i wander
have no robin's donut stores
Sarah: !!!!!
me: a poem by robyn marshall
Sarah: a great poem
epic
me: so epic
i miss poems. and crosswords
Sarah: we could write a huge missive
poems are for high school summers
and lit class
doodlin
What would a vancouver epic be called
Dunbar
me: Dun-BARRRRRRRRRR!!
the heroic call to poets the lower mainland wide!
bring me your bic, your papermates,
bring me your sharpies and your dr. grips
we ride tonight!
Sarah: your donald's market shopping bags
me: your triple-o mugs
Sarah: and soggy bus transfers
me: glance not at the wheeling crows
Sarah: the palette of MEC passes 'fore me
the motley of lulu thunders by on rollerblades
me: do not be troubled by the torn tilleys that dot your path
Sarah: ha
(my favorite word uttered in beowulf was "lovelimb")
me: you have a higher calling, vancouver poets, a sharper purpose
Sarah: for penis
me: stretch your lovelimbs wide across the whaleroad
Sarah: WHALEROAD IS MY FAVORITE
me: o burnaby, you are lost to me
the train tracks
i wander
have no robin's donut stores
Sarah: !!!!!
me: a poem by robyn marshall
Sarah: a great poem
epic
me: so epic
i miss poems. and crosswords
Sarah: we could write a huge missive
poems are for high school summers
and lit class
doodlin
What would a vancouver epic be called
Dunbar
me: Dun-BARRRRRRRRRR!!
the heroic call to poets the lower mainland wide!
bring me your bic, your papermates,
bring me your sharpies and your dr. grips
we ride tonight!
Sarah: your donald's market shopping bags
me: your triple-o mugs
Sarah: and soggy bus transfers
me: glance not at the wheeling crows
Sarah: the palette of MEC passes 'fore me
the motley of lulu thunders by on rollerblades
me: do not be troubled by the torn tilleys that dot your path
Sarah: ha
(my favorite word uttered in beowulf was "lovelimb")
me: you have a higher calling, vancouver poets, a sharper purpose
Sarah: for penis
me: stretch your lovelimbs wide across the whaleroad
Sarah: WHALEROAD IS MY FAVORITE
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