Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Eyes aka Woody Allen






Going to the ophthalmologist makes me feel particularly maudlin, because I don’t like knowing that I have degenerative eye problems.  Maybe technology will save me from ever having anything go that wrong.  In any event, when I am in a darkened room with a doctor whose face is so close to my own and they are looking into my eyes with mirrors and reflected bright light, it makes me feel just about as lonely as can be.  It always reminds me of the scenes in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors that take place in an ophthalmologist’s office (obvi).  The movie is sort of a morality tale that ends with an existential lack of a moral, and the eye doctor scenes are among the most … I can’t explain it, but it’s like the amoral protagonist wishes there was a God or some order to the world but knows there isn’t, and when he treats the eyes of a very kind, religious man who is losing his sight, it’s the injustice of this good man having such bad luck that really gets to the protagonist.  I so wanted to find a good film still of one of those scenes, but I couldn’t.  so instead, I decided to RATE all the Woody Allen movies I’ve seen, in reverse order from my least to most favorite.  Isn’t that a neurotic project to take on?  Very fitting.  Remember, I’m starting with my LEAST favorite to favorite.  Since there are so many films, it might seem hard to tell if I’m criticizing him but I absolutely adore him and sometimes find it spooky how well I empathize with his protagonists, who I don’t generally like.



Anything Else (2003)
Celebrity (1998)
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex … (1972)
Sleeper (1973)
Everyone Says I love You (1996)
Melinda and Melinda (2004)
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger (2010)
Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001)
Hollywood Endings (2002)
Small Time Crooks (2000)
Scoop (2006)
Match Point (2004)
Cassandra’s Dream (2007)
Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008)
Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
Scenes from a Mall (1991)
To Rome with Love (2012)
Interiors (1978)
Manhattan (1979)
Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
New York Stories (1989)
Shadows and Fog (1991)
Husbands and Wives (1992)
Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993)
Radio Days (1987)
Annie Hall (1977)
Sweet and Lowdown (1999)
Purple Rose of Cairo (1985)
Whatever Works (2009)
Midnight in Paris (2011)
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Alice (1990)
Broadway Danny Rose (1984)
Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)
Stardust Memories (1980)
Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)





Thursday, August 22, 2013

Thursday Poem

I’m a nobody trying to make me a name
I sit at my desk and read Mickey Spillane
And when lunchtime comes my onlyest care
Is an elevator ride where the strangers don’t stare

They stare at my rotund, irrepressible tummy
They want to say something to keep the ride chummy
But I just want quiet, no diets, no small talk
I want high art and low art, the hereafter and cock

I’m an old bag a sick hag an ER repeater
But also a woman who reaches into the ether
I pull out a jacket, I pull out a doll,
I bundle up my son and he sleeps,

And that’s all.

Guido Cagnacci Allegoria della vita umana

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Kira Yustak (I love this artist)

www.kirayustak.com
http://www.etsy.com/shop/kirayustak


Brer Rabbit Acrylic on Canvas, 20"x16"
Talking Elephants Acrylic on Canvas 24" x 30"

Chatter Phone Acrylic on Canvas 20" x 16"

Seahorses

Tenderfoot



images from Mikey and Nicky (1976) by Elaine May



Hey tenderfoot
You are kaput
Why don’t you sign on the dotted line?
Why don’t you sign on a valentine?
I have a hunch you laugh a bunch
And then you cry when the party’s through
Hey tenderfoot
Do you think it’s cool
That the night is always night
And the day is always day?

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

unstuck in time again

I’m always mentioning on here how I try to make dead things from my past (dead people, friendships, places) come back to life by researching them online.  Well I spent hours trying to use Google maps to get an aerial view of a house of a friend of my mom’s that she doesn’t know anymore.  This man was a packrat, but if you have to be one, he was a pretty good one – his floors were littered with money and old paperback books of Peanuts cartoons, his favorite, and also weir things like that Snoopy Sno-Cone maker from the 1980’s that many of us my age may remember.  This packrat indoors was cool in its way but I’m way too used to packrat environs to be interested in all the half-buried treasure trash for long, but he lived in a pretty neighborhood, and his back yard was absolutely one of a kind.  Hidden in the overgrown grass was some of the most beautiful tilework I’ve ever seen.  I had a suspicion that some famous tile person must’ve made and laid these tiles him/herself they were so lovely.  I can’t go back to that house but I thought if I spent long enough on the computer, I could find a picture of it, at least, but no dice. 

However, I did find a current picture of the Glendale bungalow where the ghost that leads me, Bill Tunilla, used to live, also from google maps, and I’ll share it here.  I remember one time when I parked in the lot to the side of the bungalow, I walked past his bedroom window to get to courtyard and his front yard, and I heard him say “Hi Robin,” and, straining to see through the window screen, I saw him laying in bed, reading a novel, maybe Saul Bellow or Barbara Pym, with his cat laying down with him, and I just loved him so much then.  My mom told me a serial killer used to live at his apartment (after him) but I tried looking this up, and, nope.


Sketches by my wonderful friend Valerie







Friday, August 16, 2013

Alphabet of Good Words

Agatha Christie
Brave
Constellation
Doll
Elephant
Feather
Gown
Harry Potter
Incandescent
Jasper
Kangaroo
Lion
Message
Night
Ocean
Peacock
Queen
Robin
Shhh
Traveler
Umbrella
Vagina
Weather
Xylophone
Youth
Zodiac


umbrellas (from www.mortonsalt.com)

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Jesus Don’t Want Me For a Sunbeam

I wasn’t raised to be religious, but when I was a kid our local school district was very bad, so I did go to a private Christian school for 2 years.  My dad was assured by the principal that they wouldn’t manipulate me with religion, like that they don’t have primers that are about how you’ll go to hell if you don’t obey your teachers, and he told me to let him know if the teachers ever said anything manipulative along those lines, so I knew from the outset that I didn’t have to obey any of the religious principles, but I was really young, and this early exposure did turn me into a semi-religious, privately practicing Christian.  I prayed every night and when the house made a noise at the same time I was having a dirty thought, I thought it was Jesus warning me to stop.  Then one night when I was at dinner with the family in sixth grade, I got one of my occasional sinking feelings of depression, and this one was really strong, and I just knew that God and the afterlife weren’t real.  I telegraphed one last mental message to Jesus in case he was real, letting him know that I was through with him, and that’s the end of that.  But sometimes when I have panic attacks I get scared that God and the afterlife are real; it’s a really common theme that runs (and runs and runs, at top speed) through my mind during panic attacks, in fact.  One instance of this, in particular, stands out – I used to like Marilyn Manson, in a tongue in cheek way, in high school.  My real favorite music was Bikini Kill and David Bowie, so I was too cool for Marilyn Manson, who is after all a mainstream band, Satanism and all.  But I really hated Christianity in high school, so I appreciated the band’s stylized blasphemy.  One night, though, shortly before I was leaving for college, I had a really horrible half-awake panic attack, and the whole time, I was just fixated on how I’d been so wrong to listen to Marilyn Manson, and I was worried I was going to go crazy and kill myself from having listened to them so much.  My second notable hell-related freak-out happened on Monday.  Oh god, I had to go to the ER for a migraine again.  I try to always be very brave, but the pain of migraines is a pain I find completely unbearable, so while I always feel embarrassed and depressed about the state of my well-being when I end up going to the ER for a migraine, it’s happened more than once (twice for sure, but maybe as many as four times).  I usually get panic attacks when this happens.  I finally saw the film This is the End on Sunday, and it was hilarious.  It was about movie stars who aren’t transported to heaven when the rapture happens, and who consequentially are witness to the flood, fires and demons that destroy the world.  The movie is very clearly irreligious, and I didn’t even think twice about it, like, it wasn’t titillating or naughty-feeling at all, because disbelief is much more common than belief, and while I could never be good friends with a Christian, I don’t hate religion anymore and am only slightly disdainful to neutral about Christianity.  The only reason I hated Christianity so much in high school is because all my bullies were heavy duty Christians.  But the stupid Christian hidden in the recesses where my soul would be if I had one must’ve been spooked by this movie, because as I had my Monday morning, pre-ER, migraine-fueled, diarrhea and vomit-filled, death-scared panic attack, I kept thinking of the movie and feeling certain that there really is going to be a day of reckoning soon, and duh, I would definitely be going to hell.  Just last week I ran over and broke the hazard cones a tree-trimming company had set up in the road, very much on purpose, making eye contact with the trimmers all the while, because I was pissed off that they were parked so dangerously and were making me drive on the wrong side of a narrow street around a blind corner.  Yes, of course I’m right, but only a stone-cold sinner acts on her urges like that.  Anyway, that movie and my guilt over having liked it and my fear of the rapture were weird and constant thoughts I had all Monday morning.


On a side note, lately I wonder more and more what life is like in a small town as opposed to the big city I was born and raised in.  I always assume that, wherever I am, anything goes and nothing is shocking.  This is often a good life to have, but sometimes I think, “Does anything leave an impression on anyone anymore?”  That’s what I was thinking in the ER, which is always a really devil-may-care environment in my experience of Los Angeles and Philly emergency rooms, having never been to one in some small town in the Midwest.  On Monday’s visit to the hospital, there was a drunk guy who kept threatening violence, and going to the bathroom to throw up, and then on the way back from the bathroom, standing like 3 feet from my bed, silently watching me, in full view of the nurse and security guard on duty, and they didn’t seem to notice or, if so, to be bothered.  For my own part, I pretended to be asleep whenever he did this.  Part of me knew he’d be drawn to me the second I started hearing him bellow.  Another weird thing is that there was an emergency button on the wall right outside where my hospital bed was, and apparently it had stopped working, so like 3 electricians crowded into the space where I was holed away crying and closing my eyes, and they were just pressing on this button that makes a siren noise over and over again, and talking as loud as possible, with me right there.  Are there just too many people in L.A. to start caring about strangers?  I started trying to desensitize myself to everything at a very young age, because the world is a bizarrely dangerous place, but maybe I’m actually deficient in de-sensitivity?  I do cry every time I watch a Harry Potter movie (aka once a day) but I’d always chalked that up to craziness.      
me

jesus

Harry Potter