Repost of a Post Past
Going down the rabbit-hole of Cece’s post. Great rememberies here, following “flockers.”
The Mother Courage of Rock
She was skinny, quick-witted, disarmingly unprofessional, alternating between stand-up patter, bardic intonations, and the hypnotic emotional sway of a chanteuse, and she was sexy in an androgynous way I hadn’t encountered before. The elements cohered convincingly; she seemed both entirely new and somehow long-anticipated. For me at nineteen, the show was an epiphany.
Springtime 1976, I was living in the cinderblock building on the glorified median strip there where they split Highway 13, and one day I went over to this one girl’s apartment, she lived right by the guy who dealt me speed, and she said, “Hey, you know who you remind me of? You remind me of Patti Smith!”
Gave her a possum grin I’m still grinning.
Wim Wenders, Pina
I referenced this in the quotes out of context below, but the trailer for Wim Wenders 3-D tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch deserves its own post.
I simply let go of my feelings and cried unrestrainedly.
Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Related to stuff we’re talking about.
Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing
4. Walk with the devil
Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
(From WFMU’s Beware of the Blog. Via Brian Beatty.)
from the comments
There was a lemon cologne I used when I was a teenage clerk behind the cosmetics counter of a fancy department store. I can’t remember the name. We had dozens of high-end perfume samples available to use. But I spritzed myself with lemon brightness every single time.
I also had a tendency to borrow a sultry red wig from the wig department. But that’s another story.
The Lockheed Lakester
This 1917 beauty, known as the Lockheed Lakester, will be up for auction at Barret-Jackson later this month.
The car, registered for road use as a 1917 Crow Lakester Custom, was hand-built from the wing tip tank of a Lockheed Super Constellation and uses a mix of automotive and aircraft parts. Wedged inside the tank is a 1.8-liter turbocharged Hemi four-cylinder mated to a five-speed manual transmission, and the two-person cockpit features gunner seats and an air-speed indicator in lieu of a speedometer.
King Creosote And Jon Hopkins: An NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Set List:
“John Taylor’s Month Away”
“Bubble”
“Cockle Shell”
“And The Racket They Made”
Beautiful. Speechless.
(thanks, Amy)
Fairies of Christmas Passed…Deconstructed
The Blue Fairies laid on the table from the tree en masse. These were created by a former greensman employee three or four years ago. I remember, as he made them, into a box-top in the backroom of the greensman offices, I entered the room he was working in. He said, as he shook the boxtop, “Look, they live! ” He giggled and grinned a grin somewhere between the grinch and the baby jesus. That vision will forever live in my heart.
from the comments
This kind of play always gets me excited. It’s easier for me to remember opening lines I like, though, because the ones I don’t like don’t stay with me. But there’s no denying that dislikes shape us too. Writing an opening sentence in a fiction is like walking up to a stranger on the street and saying excuse me…. In real encounters like this, all of human nature waits in that moment of turning to look at the person. We have secret lists of near-future possibilities waiting: panhandler? thief? long-lost friend? detective….? And we start considering the list before we actually even see the person. I like opening sentences that don’t let me feel comfortable about my list or my impulse to apply it. I like opening lines that say — something interesting is already happening. This power only comes when everything down to punctuation and single word choice is significantly managed.
Here’s a favorite opening sentence:
Happy New Year, Y’all
Smootch.
Eva Zeisel dies, age 105
Eva Zeisel, known for her playful and graceful ceramics, has died at the age of 105.
“She’s a conduit to pure things,” Mr. Klein said in 2007. He recalled that Ms. Zeisel, who had a strong appreciation of the history of decorative arts and a personal acquaintance with most of the modern design movements of the 20th century, told him never to try to create anything new. Asked how to make something beautiful, he said, she replied, “You just have to get out of the way.”
We have four or five of her pieces and they please me every time I see them.
I was feeling all hurt
and helpless and hopeless, then I heard this on the radio, and my heart rose up in spite of me.
NPR’s Winter Songs: Bill T. Jones on Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’
As cold weather descends on most of the country, we’re asking for winter songs — songs that evoke the season, and the memories that come with them. So far in our [NPR] series, we’ve heard some lighthearted or slightly wistful tunes, but this next song goes to a far icier place. It’s the choice of the celebrated dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones.
His winter song comes from “Winterreise,” — or “Winter Journey” — by Franz Schubert. It’s a song cycle about a solitary traveler in a savage winter whose heart is frozen in grief. Jones chose the last song in that song cycle: “Der Leiermann,” or “The Hurdy-Gurdy Man.”
“For me, it’s the musical arrangement underneath,” Jones tells All Things Considered host Melissa Block. “It speaks about a bleak landscape. And this bleak landscape takes me back to a day when I was in fourth grade out on the edge of town, looking at a snow-covered highway many, many yards away from my window — I should’ve been paying attention, but I was dreaming.
Damar, Mon Amour (out of context)
In context: Starlingo ii.
Damar torn from the flock.
What is Damar? Who is Damar? What is Damar?
OFFER: 7′ Pre-lit Christmas Tree (partially working) :/
Posted to the Dubuque Freecycle list:
This tree is approximately 5-6 years old — it belonged to my parents — I set it up the other night and can’t seem to get one section of lights to work and a few other lights here and there don’t come on. It’s a beautiful tree (well flocked) but I don’t have the time to go through each bulb and figure out what’s wrong with it. It came in a box but the box is pretty non-functional.
It was not used since Christmas 2008. One of the most beautiful artificial trees I have ever seen (when all the lights work).
Please email me with contact information — It needs to be gone before Tuesday night or it’s going to the curb.
Ice Cube Celebrates Charles and Ray Eames (and Los Angeles)
In a world full of McMansions where the structure takes up all the land, the Eames made structure and nature one.
(via @gary_hustwit)
The Typographic Desk Reference
This looks beautiful. It’s meant to be an instant reference for all things typographic. You can order one from Amazon or Oak Knoll.
Kate Macdonald and Janelle Blanchard cover Neko Case’s Star Witness
I wish I could open my mouth and make sounds like these.
(thanks, Andrew)
Wreath this year…
I didn’t do a wreath for DIFFA this year. This one, I did at a client’s house this morning.
I hope they like it. The feathery greenery, painted silver, at the bottom the wreath: I couldn’t decide if it looked like hoar-frost or Santa’s beard, but it seemed terribly original.
The Yamaha Y125 Moegi
The Yamaha Y125 Moegi is a cross between a motorcycle and a scooter that made its debut at the Tokyo Motor Show.
Equipped with a 125cc four-stroke engine, look for power in the 10 to 15 horsepower range and a top speed in the ballpark of 75 mph. That’s plenty for scooting around a city.
As beautiful as it is, I don’t think it will be built.
What does it feel like to be alive?
Mich Kemeter on the Taft Point in Yosemite, CA is walking unprotected a 30m /99 feet long highline both ways.
(via ★slyoyster)
Life in a Day
Any of you watched Life in a Day? I watched it this afternoon as part of my Funemployment. I liked it, put together by many, “directed” by the Scott brothers (Ridley and Tony). I’d like to see other directors take the 4,500 hours of video submitted and do their own take. A sort of “Aristocrats” for directors.
I put a post up before it happened. I didn’t see anyone familiar in the film.
RIP Ken Russell (1927-2011)
It’s a trailer, so it is crude and brash and obvious and fails to convey the delicacy and elegiac tone of the film, but here it is: the trailer for Savage Messiah (1972), possibly my favorite of the late Ken Russell‘s theatrical releases.
