apparently, their cloacas tell you their gender
My friend Sue Stauffacher‘s book Gator on the Loose! just got published — the first of four about animal adventures — and to celebrate, she had a gator party at an elementary school.
And I got to hold him.
Or her.
No one was quite sure yet.
The cloaca was small.
The Death Game
A friend mentioned recently that she liked to read my blog — since it gave her updates on my life — BUT THEN I CAUGHT HER IN THE LIE BECAUSE I HAVE NOT UPDATED THIS THING IN NEARLY A YEAR.
/obligatory long-time-no-post post.
Some of the latest: I adapted the “Basement Story” monologue about my brother, about a childhood game that never quite ended…into a sound essay. 8.5 minutes long. I went down to the local community radio station, borrowed a sound booth for an afternoon, and used Audacity to knit it together.
Then I sent it into the Missouri Review, which was having an annual “audio essay” contest. And — trust me, this never happens — it WON.
Here’s the link.
It’s dark and includes genital grief, non-obligatory. And opaque references to InfoCom games.
Listen?
36 Happenings
So I just threw myself a 36th birthday party.
I decided a month before that I wanted to dance *AND* DJ — and I didn’t want to dance ironically, or nostalgically to some Cure B-side that got it going on in Madrid in 1989. But I realized I had no actual dance musique, per se. Just some Folk Implosion, Miles Davis, Inner Life, and David Archuleta that helps me get freaky from time to time. Enter Charlie, a friend and colleague, who gave me two DVDs worth of club music from his bartending days in Florida. Who knew “Freedom ’90″ and “I.O.U.” would get those moneymakers shaking?
Next tactic was to fill the evening with live talent, to distract from my dance floor geometries (as “moves” would be kind): Ritsu, this incredible sonic-art violinist, Shawn, the dance prof at my u., and Elena, a friend/performer/singer/drag king of the evening. (Weirdly, no pics of her below…) I rented an art studio and gallery on the westside, in a former industrial building, squirreled up on the fourth floor.
As a friend said, “This wasn’t a dance party, it was a happening.”
I had two former students working the freight elevator in headsets, a glass of chilled Lillet as you stepped off, a bar with keg and high-octane gin and tonics, a plexi stage with Christmas lights underneath, and about two hours of maximal beats and zoundzcape on the rented speakers. I even iMixed the line-up, though Apple doesn’t have the deep groove remixes I pretended to like anyway:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=315096384
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewIMix?id=315096385
Needlesstosay, I stopped remembering at midnight.
Check out that pink!
Some images, by various attendees (and if you’re reading this, thanks!)
Taking in the zcene, and I will not stop with the zs, no I will znot.
the dance part!
the wall of violin sound part!
people loving people
magma of interiors
“I feel the carousel starting slowly
And going faster and faster: desk, papers, books,
Photographs of friends, the window and the trees
Merging in one neutral band that surrounds
Me on all sides, everywhere I look.
And I cannot explain the action of leveling,
Why it should all boil down to one
Uniform substance, a magma of interiors.
My guide in these matters is your self,
Firm, oblique, accepting everything with the same
Wraith of a smile, and as time speeds up so that it is soon
Much later, I can only know the straight way out,
The distance between us.
by John Ashbery, from “Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror”
(via a friend)
SF for New Year’s: dangerous amounts of fun. The carousel! The carousel! I went to Bearracuda for NYE (shout outs to bigreddee in his Xmas suspenders (thnx for the water!) and lostncove (thanks for MORE water!)) and I think I saw some magma.
On Dec. 31st, I sat in the sun in Hayes Valley, in that park across from La Boulange, eating a terrific lunch with old friends, and I just had to say “I’m having the acute sense of enjoying absolutely everything at the moment.”
And *this* after 10 days in Texas with Michael, delighting in the warmth (his, the weather), eating out constantly, watching heaps of movies (Synecdoche, NY fans, you are banished), and waking up with my best friend after months of the cat. My guide in these matters, M.
24 Postcards
Max Richter owns me.
Even when it’s coming through a cellphone.
There’s even one from Louisville!
Best Book Covers of 2008
A terrific surf of the best from the Book Design Review blog.
It strikes me that there is an ideal *length* of time that it takes to decode/delight in a cover. The width of a beautiful idea. For the best ones, it’s about 1 full second of puzzle as it reveals itself.
The End
The best thing I’ve read on the financial toilet flush:
Michael Lewis’s The End from, weirdly, Portfolio magazine. Sort of masochistic of them to publish it, but.
Lewis is just so good — the perfect mix of reporting and autobiography.
Leprechaun sighting
“Musta been a crackhead got ahold of the wrong stuff.”
The Onion couldn’t have done it any better.
And to think, “Leprechaun 5: In ‘Da Hood” was just on Fear.Net.
darlings
Today’s “Variety” has the “story” (should I say press release?) about the script (should I say draft?) and the deal (should I say option?). Even Christine taught me to read the stories backwards — the last line tells you how it ended up in print (meaning: which company put it there). I do like the word “topper” tho. And it’s the perfect Vachon project; John kept wanting to reference Swoon in all the meetings. And Capote…er Infamous.
*
Killer Films options ‘Kill Your Darlings’
John Krokidas to direct Beat scene thriller
By MICHAEL JONES
Killer Films topper Christine Vachon has optioned the spec script “Kill Your Darlings,” a biopic thriller by John Krokidas and Austin Bunn.
Krokidas will direct the pic, which involves a 1944 murder that brought together a young Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs.
“I fell in love with this when I read it,” Vachon said. “It’s a fantastic opportunity to explore the birth of the Beats through this little known and shocking crime.”
Bunn, who co-wrote Vachon’s book “A Killer Life,” brought the idea to Krokidas. Vachon will produce while D/F Management’s Steven Dontanville will exec produce.
Krokidas also is attached to direct “Slo-Mo” for Sandy Stern and Michael Stipe’s Single Cell Pictures.
Beautification Engine
I thought this was fascinating:
Beauty = symmetry.
Sum of Your Facial Parts
From the Times.
“Studies have shown that there is surprising agreement about what makes a face attractive. Symmetry is at the core, along with youthfulness; clarity or smoothness of skin; and vivid color, say, in the eyes and hair. There is little dissent among people of different cultures, ethnicities, races, ages and gender.
…
For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to define a universal ideal of beauty. St. Augustine said beauty was synonymous with geometric form and balance, according to Nancy Etcoff, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School and the author of “Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty.” Aristotle defined beauty, in part, as “order and symmetry and definiteness.”
Or as Diane Arbus said:
“When we walk down the street, what we notice about people is the flaw.”
Firsts/Lasts: Thursday Afternoon, Intermediate Drama Workshop
In playwriting class, we talk about first and last times — the strongest scenes have them, the sense of irrevocability, consequence, incident. If it’s happened before, why are you showing it this time?
Thursday, I put on a DVD of Louis Malle’s Uncle Vanya on 42nd Street. Normally, I’m loathe to play DVDs in class. Nothing feels more bush league teaching than popping in a DVD. I always hated it in college (make that high school too). But Checkov is difficult, if not impossible, to appreciate entirely on the page — the names alone, with all those syllables, drive most college students to Facebook (or, shall we say, LJ?). And trying to find a screening time for class was difficult; most students work here and have tricky schedules.
On Tuesday, we read aloud the five pages of the scene between Astrov, the doctor, and Yelena, the beautiful, 27 year old wife of the visiting, older professor. Yelena’s suppposed to find out if Astrov loves the loyal, sweet and shy Sonya. He doesn’t. He loves Yelena, who sees in him both the possibility of actual love but the annihilation of her world. It’s a hard triangle and it eventually folds in. Yelena tells him: if you don’t love Sonya, then don’t come around here. She is suffering.
What I love about good actors in Checkov: you see the whole career of an emotion.
So Thursday, I played that scene on the DVD; Julianne Moore with her early 90s bob, another familiar actor playing Astrov, all played in tight close-up, the way you’d never get it in the theatre.
And I played Yelena’s departure from the estate, saying goodbye to Astrov.
And I played the ending, when Sonya watches the doctor leave, forever.
And I wept, in the classroom. For the feeling of a permanent loss, and romantic impossibility, and that ache when your one good thing leaves, and the look on Sonya’s face (played by that actress from Grey’s Anatomy) that said: I have died and this is the after.
Thank god it was dark, and I could hide in the flicker of the projector.
And the movie ended and the class filtered out.
First times, last times.
Describe Your Grief
The first two weeks of new school behind me, I’m finally surfacing.
We start with poetry, so I’m reading tons of it again, for the first time in a while (since the last time I taught it?), hunting for work that I think will move and teach in equal measure. I’m never sure what will land, so I tend to look for stuff I like, that moves me, and cross my fingers.
Came across this poem in the latest issue of The Sun. Why are there so many good poems in The Sun? Sad but surprising and ironic and precise. What else do we need?
DESCRIBE YOUR GRIEF
by Tom Hawkins
I am driving a back road
where there are still farms,
fenced cattle, tobacco barns.
I can’t describe my grief,
unless it’s like marching
into a lost war, folding clothes by numbers,
waiting in rank for breakfast
beneath the steamy electric lights
before dawn, crawling in a cave
that hasn’t been mapped.
I round a curve and see two birds
flapping in the road.
One has been hit
by a car, and its mate
flutters just above,
wild to inspire
its fallen partner’s flight.
When Anna was ill,
I would have seen her as the fallen bird,
injured in the road, as I hovered,
watching her struggles,
urging her to fly on broken wings.
But now she is gone,
without our marathon conversations,
her startling questions.
And I don’t know
which of those two birds
I am.
August 16, San Diego
The view Sunday morning, from the balcony of Chris and Dan’s place — the remains of the after-party.
I just married two people.
Can’t quite get the words for Saturday. Will have to work on that part. And too many others there — ie, Chris, Matt — got the pictures. I’ll link to them after the cut, for those that already have seen ‘em.
What I learned as a deputy marriage commissioner for the county of San Diego
People want slowness, but not too much of it.
People are listening, tell them something.
Smile: it gives permission.
Some newness makes the tradition fresh.
Some tradition gives the newness depth.
First time “woofy” has been used in a marriage ceremony?
Figure out where the sun’s going to be, because it can mess with you.
Choose a V.I.P. space and relax there. Should I say V.V.I.P.?
Make sure to mention as many people as you can.
Huge perk of the job: everybody knows who you are.
Making friends is easy: the couple have already done it for you.
Everybody around is halfway to being a close friend.
The rings go on the left hand.
Make eye contact: especially when you say, “Do you, Dan…”
Keep the comb handy. A little homeless beard is fine, not too much tho.
Being up there, making a marriage happen: it’s amazing.
Don’t f up and say “penis” for some reason.
I didn’t.
But I thought it.
Even if one of the grooms told you not to say something,
you can still say it because what’s he going to do.
Oh
and
Make sure you have room in your heart for absolutely everybody.
Decoder Ring
ok, i’m as much of a fan of Sigur Ros as the next beard-o with a soft-on for Iceland.
But isn’t anybody curious just what the hell Jonsí is singing about? Their newest is the first time I want to call bullshit a little. The best stuff off ( ) was instrumental and now Jonsí seems to be saying “Sigh ooo” a LOT.
According to one website:
hoppípolla = hopping into puddles
glósóli = glowing sole
another song means “Nosebleed”
Just because we can’t understand doesn’t = interesting.
SDF-LAX
First meeting, re: the script next week in LA. Days before I’m supposed to move. Christ, but then…is there a choice? This is why people live out there: so they don’t need to spend $380 and kill two days in transit to take a meeting with producers and end up with a “free option” for their screenplay.
Still, the producer is the perfect match. Fingers crossed.
Feline update
Cat had blood work, which apparently requires shaving a little bowtie into her breastplate. Turns out she’s aces, so she definitely has a urinary tract infection. Very common in cats, sez the vet. I keep wondering if sleeping on the DVR cooked her urine in her pee hole or something.
Been trying to give her a liquid antibiotic. It “tastes” like banana. Wtf? My cat does not EAT bananas. Of course, she hates me and hides whenever she sees the dropper come out from the fridge. She no stupid.
The bowtie is very cute tho. It actually looks more like a zipper or something. Like she’s a cat wearing a cat costume.
The Cat
Now that I am covering my couch with a tarp — to avoid more “accidents” by the cat — I was able to capture a decent amount of her urine two days back. Lovely morning task, let me tell you: funneling hot pee into a cup off a tarp.
The vet wanted it to test for a urinary tract infection, which might be causing the random peeing spree she’s been on. (Thanks all cat advisees!) I dropped off the cup yesterday morning and the vet called back an hour later: Slinky has “significant” amounts of blood in her urine.
Gulp.
I’m between feeling relieved that it IS a medical condition and dread that it’s something serious. She’s been as active and playful as ever, but do you, like, wince and walk funny with kidney failure? The vet thinks it might be a kidney stone — dry cat food might be the culprit! She’ll go on pure-Fancy Fest as a deprivation diet: her idea of heaven, actually.
Then I keep thinking: I love this cat to death, but man she’s been trouble from day 1. She’s won the kitty lotto by living with me, the guy who put up with her resistance to touch, her hesitancy around people, her mortal dread of cars/planes/travel/confinement…oh and let us not forget the never-using-the-litter-ever thing. She has had a great cat life, and it’s been amazing watching a feral animal learn to love. She seeks me out now, in the house, and just wants to tuck into me whenever I lay flat. That’s my girl.
I dropped her off this morning to a battery of mewling and undercoat shedding. She’s there for the day getting blood work and an xray! Courage! I hope she’s just got some old lady kidney stone.
/end flagrant LJ self-involvement and pet-elegy.