Cotton Moon
September 29, 2004
Today's Plog features a trip to scenic Scott, Arkansas, and last night's moonrise. Whenever a full moon rises and it appears larger than normal, for some reason it flips the switches on a part of my brain that demand I give all my attention to the sky. I first saw the rising orb last night on my way back to the laundromat. I immediately ran around trying to get a good angle to shoot from but I was bound to the ground and all its horribly intrusive artificial light sources, and of course those blasted trees. So I drove up the hill from my apartment to Knoop Park and took pictures there.It was pitch black with only the lights of the city and the moon to guide me so I had to watch my steps closely. While I was making my way down to the park, I encountered three people on the park's stone terrace reading aloud from the book of Genesis. Making my way down to the lower patio, there was a man and his son looking at the cityscape. The boy was about 4 I guess and he was asking questions like what's the difference between Arkansas and Little Rock, and the dad was explaining everything about everything. All the while I was taking pictures of the sky. The boy asked me why I wasn't taking more pictures of the city and the best I could say was, "because the city's always there."
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This Is Where I'm From, Part II
September 28, 2004
Actual items from the Harrison Daily Times Police Beat:• A man went to the HPD about 9:30 Saturday morning to get information about churches that might help him with lodging for a few days. The man was arrested on a Berryville warrant for failure to appear in court with bond set at $1,060. He was later released to Berryville Police. [ed. note: Berryville is about 30 miles from Harrison]For those who may have missed it, here's Part I of Where I'm From.
• Sunday afternoon, a woman called the HPD and said a recliner was in the southbound lane of U.S. 62/65 at the traffic signal near Home Depot. Officers responded, but the recliner was gone on arrival.
• About 8:45 a.m., a Dairy Queen employee called Harrison Police and said a naked man was in a vehicle in the drive-through. The owners declined to press charges against the man, but officers made contact with him and told him he'd be cited for criminal trespassing if he returned.
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A Modest Proposal
September 27, 2004
I have...interesting feet. They are sensitive but by no means tender. Raised in rural Arkansas, I have done my share of barefooted living, so I can walk over most anything without major pain. Yet I find that when I walk barefoot I can feel everything intensely. One of the best parts of my day is taking off my shoes when I get home.I took a walk barefoot outside the office today, and it was great. I started to wonder if shoes in the modern world might be obsolete. Think about this for a moment: shoes were invented a few millennia ago for terrain far more treacherous than the modern world generally provides. How many times in your day do you walk over patches of spiky branches or sharp rocks? Mostly we walk from house to car to building, and it's a relatively safe and clean path. It might be hot or rough, but this is likely only because our feet are so sensitive from being cooped up in socks and shoes all our lives. Sure the ground is generally unclean, but which is more clean to you - dirt and dust or sweat and fungus? I think my feet smell far worse when they've been wrapped in a sock for 9 hours.
Sadly, though, the modern world poses a different set of threats: oil and other chemical toxins. Your average McDonald's parking lot is probably far more dangerous to the bare foot than any forest. Still, I know that in my daily trek between house, car and office I encounter no major podiatric dangers. For white collar office workers it could happen.
Just something to think about. Go barefoot more often and see what you prefer.
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A Sense of Purpose in an Otherwise Meaningless Existence
September 27, 2004
This is why the Internet was invented: The Infinite Cat Project.Another reason: M.C. Escher paintings made out of Legos.
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Rock the Nation
September 26, 2004
I saw two of my favorite groups Friday night, King's X and Van Halen. Details posted in the brand new Little Rock Guitar Forum. Check it out and tell your friends.Comments
"The Wookie Has No Pants"
September 22, 2004
Best line from the Star Wars DVD documentary came from Carrie Fisher, who said that during the production of Episode IV, all sorts of corporate types were coming in with various concerns and troubles, one of which was, "should Chewbacca have a loin cloth or something?" So far I haven't had a chance to fully dig into the box set yet, but it's really an enlightening look at Lucas in the early days, and it shows me his perspective better. I now understand the reason for his constant edits. He didn't want to make 3 movies or 6 movies, he wanted to make one. So all these edits he makes are just things he would have done if he hadn't had the restraints of budget and time and studio politics that he had. Plus the documentary is full of screen test, alternate takes and on-set goofing off, which is great.Last Sunday, I overheard three kids at Allsop Park racing each other. When they arrived at their destination, the boys chimed in thusly:
Boy 1: "Winner!"They raced again, and the results were somewhat similar:
Boy 2: "Second!"
Boy 3: "Wait, we tied for second!"
Boy 1: "Winner!"Something tells me I'm going to raise a child most resembling Boy 3.
Boy 2: "Second!"
Boy 3: "Look a red leaf!"
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Just Another Manic Monday
September 20, 2004
I came to work this morning to see something peculiar in the parking lot.
My office sits at the bottom of a steep hill leading up to Interstate 40. The driver insisted he was OK, but he seemed to be limping. I heard from the cop on the scene that he didn't have insurance. He had Minnesota plates, so I'm not sure if he was just passing through or what. I'm also not clear on what happened exactly, but the speculation is he fell asleep at the wheel. Fortunately for us, the damage was superficial. No structural damage to the building, no loss of expensive or sensitive equipment. He just bashed in a closet. A little to the left and he would have taken out our A/C; a little to the right and he would have taken out our phone line and T1 connection. And the fact that this happened at about 6:30 AM means our cars are OK.
Last night DeLaine and Richard and I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. It's the single most fabulous visual presentation I've seen since, well the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but still...maybe it's better to say that it is the most original visual presentation I've seen since Star Wars. My dad is going to freak out when he sees it because it is essentially an old Republic serial with a CGI budget and modern film technology. It's retro sci-fi, and it's gorgeous to behold.
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Pride is a Sin
September 19, 2004
This is why Mike Keneally is my hero. He has a song called "Pride is a Sin" and here is some unpacking of that concept he did in an interview over at seaoftranquility.org:I think that pride as an emotion or as a way of being, it's like it cuts off possibilities. It cuts off emotions and feelings. Pride is self ... you puff yourself up and it's like you can't hear or you can't feel. And frequently these are hardcore religious people who go on and on about how proud they are. But that's thing one if you're going to have any kind of enlightenment is to let go of that shit. Remove yourself from the equation to the best of your ability. Stop being centered on how you feel and how proud you are of your accomplishments. Anything that happens to you is a gift so how can you feel proud of it? Grateful. That's how I feel about it.Thanks, Mike. To take it a step further, I think pride is often something that's only expressed in the face of criticism. Black pride and gay pride are things that only come in opposition to prevailing attacks on their particular cultures. And white pride is something that probably comes from the same thing, but only gets expressed by people who aren't confident enough in themselves as individuals that they have to identify with a group to compensate for their own deficiencies. However thin you slice it, it's still baloney. Pride is a sin; everything is a gift so stay humble.
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Plethora of Pictures
September 18, 2004
Yet another Plog today. Somebody stop me. For those of you keeping score at home, we currently have no less than three new Plogs right now. In case you missed them, they can be found here:September 13
September 16
September 18
Also, I thought of something fun to do with the bulletin board: picture captioning. So click here to caption some weird old postcards I found in a Bryant junk shop.
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Bad Cop, No Donut
September 17, 2004
Dark Hearted Disco Queen was lamenting her distinct lack of donutty goodness this morning. Try as I might I couldn't send the tasty chocolate glazed treat through the computer to her in Indiana.
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Required Readings on the Topic of Cool
September 17, 2004
Artist, writer, poet, and Professor of the Humanities Bill Watterson wrote the definitive source text on the Nature of Cool in the late 20th Century. Witness his Zen-like efficiency of line and word.
"What Fun Is It Being Cool If You Can't Wear a Sombrero?" has been my motto for so long, I'm number 1 and 2 in Yahoo Search for that phrase.
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Sloan
September 16, 2004
Pics from last night's Sloan show. They rock. Also some other random bits all in the new Plog, arriving just 3 days after the last Plog. Sorry to be so horribly sporadic. Not much happens around here, but when it does, it brings friends.Comments
Rain
September 14, 2004
Last night rain came down in a peculiar way. I could only hear it. I was eating my dinner and I heard the sounds, but looking out the window, I could receive no visual confirmation. Were I deaf I would not have known it was raining. I had to stare very intently at the leaves outside my window before I could see some wet effect on them. I opened the window, and immediately my view was crowded by those two cats that live in my apartment. We smelled the air and watched the ground turn dark with moisture. Good times.Comments
A Full Weekend
September 13, 2004
Last weekend I got my violin fixed, went to Chris's birthday party at Heather's (birthdays on September 11 deserve twice as much drinking as regular birthdays we figure), went out on the river with David and Emily, then went to see Hero, which was quite good. Pictures from the river in the new Plog.Comments
Now With Bulletin Board
September 10, 2004
I recently discovered that my web host offers a free bulletin board service. It's really easy to manage, so I set it up here. I think I'm going to set a permanent link here for journal comments eventually.Also, something that will always make me smile, no matter what. Four words: Pudgee the Phat Bastard.
Dogs and Cats Riding in Limousines
September 8, 2004
Further compounding the blunt-force trauma to the soul that I received last night as described in the journal entry below, I also happened upon a television program on Bravo about Miami plastic surgeons. I thought to myself, "hey I wonder if my client Dr. Salomon is on that show? Nah, that'd be too weird."As I am quickly learning, nothing in the modern world can ever be too weird.
Dr. Jhonny Salomon (not to be confused with Dr. Johnny Salomon, or Dr. Johnny Solomon, or Dr. Johnny Salamon - don't click the links, I'm just helping optimize him for multifarious misspellings) is in fact being featured on this show on Bravo called Miami Slice. He's a plastic surgeon in Miami and the show is another in a series of reality shows that goes beyond the usual Lifetime or MTV plastic surgery case studies, and into the personal lives of the doctors themselves. The show throws in a healthy dose of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous/Cribs flavor as it shows off the lavish lifestyles of these plastic surgeons. I watched one doctor send his dog to the vet in a limo. I think I was too numbed from the cruel existential irony of the Pat Buchanan episode of Hardball to realize that every hour of television probably provides me with some support for the coming Apocalypse.
An amusing side note is that, in Jhonny's bio on the Bravo website, Bravo refers to Miami as "a city where true love is often difficult to find." My soul couldn't help but cry quietly in the darkness for the plight of lonely plastic surgeons everywhere who are just looking for true love, for something...real.
Dog and Cats Living Together...Mass Hysteria
September 7, 2004
I was just flipping through the channels (yes, Comcast still hasn't disconnected my cable) and saw Pat Buchanan on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Ordinarily I wouldn't give either of these savage twits the time of day but since The West Wing was on commercial, I figured what the heck and gave them a couple of minutes to speak to me. What followed was nothing short of a paradigm shifting without a clutch.On this day, September 7, 2004, I fully agreed with every word that spilled from the mouth of erstwhile Presidential candidate and noted religious whack-job Patrick J. Buchanan.I screamed in a toxic mixture of confusion and relief, which I imagine is how people must feel when Spiderman saves their child - suddenly this insect-man-thing comes to the rescue out of nowhere? Seems old Pattycakes is breaking from the party line and writing his own Bush administration-dissing tome. It's called, ever so cleverly, Where the Right Went Wrong. Click this link to the Drudge Report's list of quotations from Buchanan's book and read along at home. Periodically pause to remind yourself that this is the man who called AIDS "nature's retribution" to homosexuals, and who said "our culture is superior because our religion is Christianity."
Looking at the quotations from his book, I could not ask for a more striking sign of the Apocalypse than the fact that, at least for today, Pat Buchanan provided me with a voice of reason and a breath of fresh air. Were I looking for a surer sign of the End Times, I have found it. What does it say about this administration when the liberals are standing hand in hand with the likes of Pat Buchanan?
"Right Next to Interesting Failures" Redux
September 7, 2004
After a very small amount of reconnaissance, I discovered NoahBambach.com and the online petition to get Kicking and Screaming onto DVD. Please sign it. For the children."Right Next to Interesting Failures"
September 5, 2004
As
many of you know, one of my favorite movies is a little independent film called
Kicking and Screaming.
Recently I discovered a film called Highball,
whose cast is composed almost entirely of Kicking and Screaming alums.
IMDb has it listed as having been written and
directed by Noah Baumbach, yet the DVD case says "Ernie Fusco" for director and
"Jesse Carter" as writer. IMDb is smart enough to know that these are pseudonyms,
but I have to wonder why. Contractual obligations? Further compounding the mystery
is the fact that, watching the DVD, one gets a sense that it's a demo reel for
a proper motion picture to be made later. The editing is patchwork in places,
the lighting is awful, and sometimes the audio isn't properly synched. At first
I thought it was my machine, but no, the film is in fact, shoddy. This is unfortunate
because there's actually a good film going on underneath it all. Arriving two
years after Kicking and Screaming, Highball features a near-reunion
of the former's supporting cast (most everybody's here - Otis, Max, Chet, the
video store guy, the "you're pretty" guy, the writing teacher, the EuroTrash guy)
as well as the distinctive dialogue-over-dialogue style that marks the work as
Baumbach's. Highball is also noteworthy for the appearance of Ally Sheedy
as Ally Sheedy, Rae Dawn Chong as Rae Dawn Chong, and famed director Peter Bogdanovich
as a random partygoer who does an assortment of spot-on impressions of Jerry Lewis,
John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and more. How weirdly wonderful is this film? Incidentally, it looks as though Baumbach may be getting some bigger exposure as his co-writing credit appears on Wes Anderson's new Bill Murray/Owen Wilson feature The Life Aquatic. So he's got that going for him...which is nice.