'hipster puppies' already got a book deal. photo blogs seem to go from inception to print the fastest, but even so, two and a half months (january 30 to the date of that announcement) is dishearteningly quick. back in the day, i suppose that someone who wanted to make a book of captioning pictures of dogs could have just found an agency and had them pitch the idea to a publisher; which is to say they'd have had a book in no time at all as far as having to keep up a blog goes. that's some condolence. some. we just thought we were doing so well, is all.
so i made some time to think by taking the long way home along highway 30 and over the st. johns bridge. i probably shouldn't have, but it's been too long since i've ridden more than ten consecutive miles, and i wouldn't let myself shake the idea once i'd gotten it. the hipster puppies really had nothing to do with it -- although i did happen to visit that blog today and click back through enough pages to get the news, and i did plan on sharing it somehow.
my left pedal starting seizing about a month ago, or maybe a short while longer, but in truth i have absolutely no recollection, which just goes to show how much i'm willing to tempt fate in the name of thrift -- or some overthought extension of cost and maximum beautification of my bicycle. thrift isn't exactly right, because i've already bought a new set of pedals and have been porting them in my bag for going on two weeks now. true, the only 15mm wrench i carry is a socket wrench for removing my wheels, but i still take comfort in knowing that i could hypothetically pull a switch out once i finally grind down all of the bearings in the problem pedal and the body falls off the spindle.
i've known what to expect since the grinding started, because the same thing happened to my right pedal last december, and when the thing finally went (in a downpour at the edge of a speed bump on fremont), i went with it. i'd been over lubricating that pedal to silence the screeching and crackling of the bearings melting down, and i'll admit that the silver ooze seeping out of the pedal body after its final failure was exciting in its approximation of blood. had it been my own blood, my excitement would definitely have been tempered. my reaction to that is usually a faint. thankfully, the worst i got from that incident was wet(ter). though it did, i guess, make me a little later to my scheduled plans.
why risk it again? well, because i finally ordered new drivetrain parts the day after picking up my pedals, and it seems a shame not to have all of my pretty new fancies put on my bike at once. let it ride like nearly new for a couple of days, right? i'm going to have to clean the hell out of my bike before doing anything near the cranks anyway, so there's not wanting to do that twice, too. vanity a cruel mistress? she pales in comparison to laziness.
so i probably shouldn't have ridden highway 30, especially with my road-side pedal about to go, and especially since i hadn't put my new pedals -- or even the socket wrench or an extra tube -- back in my bag after hosing it off on sunday, as useless as any of those items might actually have proven. but a cheap disaster like a flat would've had me walking up and over the bridge to the number 4 bus at the least. i've been there before, and it's the unexpected waste of time (and it's easy avoidability) that really stings. but, i rode the long way anyway because i felt like it. the air was cool, but the sun was still warm; and there's a stretch of 30 about a mile from the bridge that's shaded in the evening by the trees in forest park, and the shade lasts until the top of the approach to the bridge so you've enough time to cool off before the second half of the ride back towards town.
despite the hospitable atmospheric conditions, though, this time the bridge approach had me a little scared. drivers are generally not ungracious about allowing cyclists to cross the two lanes of traffic separating the bike lane from the left turn lane that puts you on course to the bridge. but it's quite a hill after that, and in addition to the dying pedal, i'd recently replaced my cleat bolts without replacing my cleats (of course i'd want to wait to install the new cleats that came with the pedals until i'd installed the pedals themselves), and the little bit of grime between the old cleats and the new bolts has the bolts sticking out just a hair's breadth too far to guarantee them completely locking on to my pedals, which means my feet sometimes come unintentionally unstuck when i'm pulling up at full force. and on a hill, that pulling up is kind of key.
no problem. or, i should say, i didn't run into one. but there's always that jackass who ignores the "bikes on roadway" sign and must not see that there are pedestrians using the narrow sidewalk who waits until he's right behind you at the middle of the bridge to blare his horn and then swerve around you shaking his fist. there's another fucking lane, asshole, and hardly any traffic. the semis and buses don't have any problem moving along smoothly and safely. and so that guy reminds you that it's him that's going to cause you to crash and not the anticipated mechanical failure. it's always the unexpected things that do it. the view from up there is to die for, though. really. ha.
all that just to get home and tell you that tavi made the blog roll. tavi is thirteen. she writes about fashion. she writes like a thirteen year old about fashion. but it's obvious that tavi is an intelligent and thoughtful thirteen year old. is it more important when someone like tavi writes impressions of things that are similar to reactions you find elsewhere on the internet? apparently. she gets flown to runway shows and fancy parties. she had at least one magazine cover last fall. if tavi said that she really dug those big, old-timey panties from the dolce and gabbana men's s/s 2011 collection, would they sell better than as a result of us saying so here? (that's a zen kind of a question because no one reads this blog and tavi doesn't cover menswear.) teenagers just use the internet well. you never sound good comparing yourself to them.
we can't disparage ourselves any further in this post, because, yes, some people do pay attention to our small efforts. case in point, here is dolce and gabbana's take on me and monique in the backyard with the chickens. madonna does monique pretty well. i might even suggest monique go blond for the rest of the summer. and damn if i'm not looking good in those pants. one note to the stylist, though: we're not allowed to have roosters in the city.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
YOUR DADDY'S RICH AND YOUR MAMMA'S GOOD LOOKIN'
summertime full frontal; portland, or, u.s.a. consecutive days of ninety-five degrees in upper latitude sun isn't something that the dewy skinned denizens of the pacific northwest are accustomed to, and we complain as much as we complain about the rains during the rest of the year. but that's just custom. our beside-ourselves-with-giddiness(ness?) is in no way diminished. the perennial dilemma: stay in town for the cut-offed, tank topped and tattooed, or head out for strange nature and sunburn. unfortunately, we're the only major west coast city not actually on the coast (though, granted, i don't think seattle even has anything like the beaches we have at sauvie island). but as such, when the living's easy, portlanders head to the river.
strangely, the northernmost point of portland is at the confluence of the willamette and the columbia, but "the river" refers to neither. and, in fact, it can be any of the clackamas, the sandy or the washougal (plus some, i'm sure, i've yet to experience), but still it's just "the river" -- and we know that you're a local when you can correctly pronounce the names of everywhere that might mean.
the river is a bit of a drive, but they're all well short of the four hour round trip to the ocean. come to think of it, i don't think that any river hangouts are actually in the city proper, but it's much easier to stuff five people and a picnic in the car when relief is just past traffic on the 84 or the 205 and not on the other side of a parking morass across the coastal range. the old swimming hole charm of the river wins it points over the ocean too, a nostalgically classic essential when the days get as stifling as these past few have been.
whether any of my friends has a swimming hole in her past i don't know. i certainly don't. to be honest, i'm not big on the out of doors, and it took me until last summer to accept a river invitation (or, keeping with that honesty, to get one). but the breed of americana rustica native to the river (which, incidentally, only drinks beer that costs less than six dollars a six pack) isn't at all alien to the city kids raised on fat inheritances of boomer tradition, even if they're just starting to peel back the irony and have real experiences of their own. thank god.
spring knows a spot at the clackamas that might be a secret. or it might be that people don't like fording the water twice with their crap held over their heads or scraping through a hundred yards of blackberries. then, sometimes, other people are there regardless. the secret spot is worth it, though. it's technically trespassing, but we paid for parking this time, so on balance we're on the right side of the law, right? the blackberries threaten to ruin the legs you've been looking forward to having seen in those sateen roller shorts, but the smell of the verdant heat alone merits the trek. really, you're walking through the bushes and the heat smells green; and you remember that yes, you live in a rain forest, and, but for the rain, it's amazing.
our spot at the clackamas is along a small inlet with a rocky abutment in its center. guessing from the rusted poles coming out of the water near its edge and the ruined concrete wall that separates the blackberry path from the inlet, the abutment was part of a bridge. to or from where i can't guess. there's sand between the water and the edge of the forest, but not much of it this past friday as the river was high, and there were others who'd made it to the spot before us. so we laid our towels on the rocks, which sounds better than concrete though that's more likely what it is. you can walk from the rocks into a deepish pool of still water, beyond which there's a fast current that runs across the mouth of the inlet. roll onto your back or your belly and you can ride the current its length, but the water's not deep, and losing your cool and dropping your posture means getting buffeted by the rocks.
just past the current is a pebbled shoal where i decided i'd make a spectacle of urination after one and a half red beers. it's easiest to get there by swimming to the upstream edge of the inlet and wading the current where it slows at a bend in the river before picking up over the rocks. the peeing was only half funny. or, at least i couldn't hear much laughter from the shore. i didn't have anything on my feet for that crossing and i've had a painfully awkward time taking steps. then insult adds itself to injury when i decide to get rid of the empty beer cans and sports drink bottles i find left on the shoal. i'm trying to swim the pool back to the towels with two armloads of buoyant trash, and i'm flailing, sputtering, trying to keep my head above the water and keep the water out of my mouth. after all, there's pee in that river. that got a genuine laugh.
then time in the sun. more red beer in the sun. berries and peaches in the sun. reapplication of sunblock. summertime full frontal. reading in the sun. talking with friends in the sun. gossip with friends in the sun. you serious, francie? no shade in the sun, though. no shade. and no sparkling mint and berry drinks. not only did i forget to pick any mint before leaving home, but the water at the back of the abutment stole the two bottles of san pellegrino we'd buried in the shallows to chill. by the time we gave up looking for them (which after so much sun and old german is a stupidly long while), all our ice had melted and bottle three was spared the guillotine.
past the shoal are two deep sections of calmer water bordered by the current that comes around the bend to the mouth of the inlet, the terrifying one that runs the edge of the bluff on the opposite side of the river and a third current that joins the other two. silly on beer and ecstatic at knowing that we'd all weathered another fourth and fifth winter (those are the ones that happen in june) without (completely) losing it, i decided i'd swim for a while against the currents and through those two calmer sections. it was great, but you shouldn't follow my example. i haven't gotten a tv signal at home since the first year i lived here, but i can't remember ever catching a local summer newscast that didn't report on someone drowning under the influence on the clackamas. but stupid hindsight just ruins my flow. those currents gave me some killer exercise. my arms still hurt so good. but the best part was hearing monique's thirteen year old sister laughing behind me as she rode the current over the rocks...and remembering how dumb with excitement i was doing the same thing for the first time last summer.
those rocks are like razors, though. good and bad. on the good side, the cuts don't hurt to clean and they're easy to bandage. unfortunately, combined with the scrapes from the blackberry bushes, they mean that having my legs waxed with monique next weekend as planned isn't going to reveal anything you'd want to look at. an argument for staying in the city, i suppose. but i wasn't hearing arguments at that point. in any case, we made it home by seven, and everyone was still cut-offed and tank topped. just in time for round two.
strangely, the northernmost point of portland is at the confluence of the willamette and the columbia, but "the river" refers to neither. and, in fact, it can be any of the clackamas, the sandy or the washougal (plus some, i'm sure, i've yet to experience), but still it's just "the river" -- and we know that you're a local when you can correctly pronounce the names of everywhere that might mean.
the river is a bit of a drive, but they're all well short of the four hour round trip to the ocean. come to think of it, i don't think that any river hangouts are actually in the city proper, but it's much easier to stuff five people and a picnic in the car when relief is just past traffic on the 84 or the 205 and not on the other side of a parking morass across the coastal range. the old swimming hole charm of the river wins it points over the ocean too, a nostalgically classic essential when the days get as stifling as these past few have been.
whether any of my friends has a swimming hole in her past i don't know. i certainly don't. to be honest, i'm not big on the out of doors, and it took me until last summer to accept a river invitation (or, keeping with that honesty, to get one). but the breed of americana rustica native to the river (which, incidentally, only drinks beer that costs less than six dollars a six pack) isn't at all alien to the city kids raised on fat inheritances of boomer tradition, even if they're just starting to peel back the irony and have real experiences of their own. thank god.
spring knows a spot at the clackamas that might be a secret. or it might be that people don't like fording the water twice with their crap held over their heads or scraping through a hundred yards of blackberries. then, sometimes, other people are there regardless. the secret spot is worth it, though. it's technically trespassing, but we paid for parking this time, so on balance we're on the right side of the law, right? the blackberries threaten to ruin the legs you've been looking forward to having seen in those sateen roller shorts, but the smell of the verdant heat alone merits the trek. really, you're walking through the bushes and the heat smells green; and you remember that yes, you live in a rain forest, and, but for the rain, it's amazing.
our spot at the clackamas is along a small inlet with a rocky abutment in its center. guessing from the rusted poles coming out of the water near its edge and the ruined concrete wall that separates the blackberry path from the inlet, the abutment was part of a bridge. to or from where i can't guess. there's sand between the water and the edge of the forest, but not much of it this past friday as the river was high, and there were others who'd made it to the spot before us. so we laid our towels on the rocks, which sounds better than concrete though that's more likely what it is. you can walk from the rocks into a deepish pool of still water, beyond which there's a fast current that runs across the mouth of the inlet. roll onto your back or your belly and you can ride the current its length, but the water's not deep, and losing your cool and dropping your posture means getting buffeted by the rocks.
just past the current is a pebbled shoal where i decided i'd make a spectacle of urination after one and a half red beers. it's easiest to get there by swimming to the upstream edge of the inlet and wading the current where it slows at a bend in the river before picking up over the rocks. the peeing was only half funny. or, at least i couldn't hear much laughter from the shore. i didn't have anything on my feet for that crossing and i've had a painfully awkward time taking steps. then insult adds itself to injury when i decide to get rid of the empty beer cans and sports drink bottles i find left on the shoal. i'm trying to swim the pool back to the towels with two armloads of buoyant trash, and i'm flailing, sputtering, trying to keep my head above the water and keep the water out of my mouth. after all, there's pee in that river. that got a genuine laugh.
then time in the sun. more red beer in the sun. berries and peaches in the sun. reapplication of sunblock. summertime full frontal. reading in the sun. talking with friends in the sun. gossip with friends in the sun. you serious, francie? no shade in the sun, though. no shade. and no sparkling mint and berry drinks. not only did i forget to pick any mint before leaving home, but the water at the back of the abutment stole the two bottles of san pellegrino we'd buried in the shallows to chill. by the time we gave up looking for them (which after so much sun and old german is a stupidly long while), all our ice had melted and bottle three was spared the guillotine.
past the shoal are two deep sections of calmer water bordered by the current that comes around the bend to the mouth of the inlet, the terrifying one that runs the edge of the bluff on the opposite side of the river and a third current that joins the other two. silly on beer and ecstatic at knowing that we'd all weathered another fourth and fifth winter (those are the ones that happen in june) without (completely) losing it, i decided i'd swim for a while against the currents and through those two calmer sections. it was great, but you shouldn't follow my example. i haven't gotten a tv signal at home since the first year i lived here, but i can't remember ever catching a local summer newscast that didn't report on someone drowning under the influence on the clackamas. but stupid hindsight just ruins my flow. those currents gave me some killer exercise. my arms still hurt so good. but the best part was hearing monique's thirteen year old sister laughing behind me as she rode the current over the rocks...and remembering how dumb with excitement i was doing the same thing for the first time last summer.
those rocks are like razors, though. good and bad. on the good side, the cuts don't hurt to clean and they're easy to bandage. unfortunately, combined with the scrapes from the blackberry bushes, they mean that having my legs waxed with monique next weekend as planned isn't going to reveal anything you'd want to look at. an argument for staying in the city, i suppose. but i wasn't hearing arguments at that point. in any case, we made it home by seven, and everyone was still cut-offed and tank topped. just in time for round two.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
BUT IT SOUNDS SO MUCH BETTER THAN "GERMANENESS". . .
'survival of the book' just (via a tertiary reference) turned us on to 'the second pass,' where, in the truest spirit of finding the end of the internet at work, i abandoned my review of neglected 'sotb' posts and started tracking back through posts at the site i linked to from it.
i wasn't able to find the "spirited reviews of older books" mentioned in the nathan ihara article that was mentioned at 'sotb,' but i did come across a blog post on that laura miller essay on the changing of the literary gatekeepers that we discussed here at the end of june. 'the second pass' beat us to the discussion (for shame, i know), and twists the dagger by opening with the author's own admission of being "a few days late" (plus the author seems to have had a varied and exciting career).
read the post if you're interested in the topic. it does well in addressing some of the arguments made against miller's thesis in the comments of her original article. otherwise, waste your time ordering me a pair of those quote unquote bookends. we bring it up here only to remind everyone again of just how germane it is to be 'looking good in pants.' no boasting, though. after all, we were dead center average as far as the curve was drawn on this particular discussion.
for the time being, i'm claiming the word "germanity" in the name of this blog. real dictionaries refuted that one too. it wasn't just blogger this time. but i prefer it because of our relation to le chancelier allemand. and there's really no point arguing with french diplomacy.
i wasn't able to find the "spirited reviews of older books" mentioned in the nathan ihara article that was mentioned at 'sotb,' but i did come across a blog post on that laura miller essay on the changing of the literary gatekeepers that we discussed here at the end of june. 'the second pass' beat us to the discussion (for shame, i know), and twists the dagger by opening with the author's own admission of being "a few days late" (plus the author seems to have had a varied and exciting career).
read the post if you're interested in the topic. it does well in addressing some of the arguments made against miller's thesis in the comments of her original article. otherwise, waste your time ordering me a pair of those quote unquote bookends. we bring it up here only to remind everyone again of just how germane it is to be 'looking good in pants.' no boasting, though. after all, we were dead center average as far as the curve was drawn on this particular discussion.
for the time being, i'm claiming the word "germanity" in the name of this blog. real dictionaries refuted that one too. it wasn't just blogger this time. but i prefer it because of our relation to le chancelier allemand. and there's really no point arguing with french diplomacy.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
AGAIN WITH THE LEMON CAKE?
in the now proud 'looking good in pants' tradition of writing principally on books that AREN'T on our published reading lists, i announce aimee bender's reading from the particular sadness of lemon cake. it's tonight at powell's downtown, 7:30 p.m. pacific.
summer is (fingers crossed, knock on something) finally here for almost sure, and that -- for me in my portland incarnation -- means* another series of readings and book signings. maybe i just don't pay as much attention when the weather's different, or maybe the harder hitters only get sent out when it's really warm. or maybe neither's the case, because i saw mary gaitskill -- and she signed my copy of veronica -- in the spring, which is not during summer. in any case, book tours are less and less profitable (i.e. more and more canceled or not scheduled at all), so i'm just happy i get the opportunity to maybe come up with questions to ask an author in person at all.
and the books they get signed. some of them i read, others sit on the shelf or in piles hoping that their resale values will rise enough to take them somewhere more interesting. total buyer's remorse has been extremely rare, but i haven't managed to avoid it completely.
i won't be at bender's reading. whether there are extra autographed (and still discounted) copies of her book still at powell's tomorrow will tell me once and for all if i should read it. fate, though, can definitely be persuaded by the purchase of a gift by anyone in attendance.
*in addition, summer means watching track races at alpenrose, berry picking rides to the beach at sauvie island, trips to the river. boys without shirts, in other words. be waiting.
summer is (fingers crossed, knock on something) finally here for almost sure, and that -- for me in my portland incarnation -- means* another series of readings and book signings. maybe i just don't pay as much attention when the weather's different, or maybe the harder hitters only get sent out when it's really warm. or maybe neither's the case, because i saw mary gaitskill -- and she signed my copy of veronica -- in the spring, which is not during summer. in any case, book tours are less and less profitable (i.e. more and more canceled or not scheduled at all), so i'm just happy i get the opportunity to maybe come up with questions to ask an author in person at all.
and the books they get signed. some of them i read, others sit on the shelf or in piles hoping that their resale values will rise enough to take them somewhere more interesting. total buyer's remorse has been extremely rare, but i haven't managed to avoid it completely.
i won't be at bender's reading. whether there are extra autographed (and still discounted) copies of her book still at powell's tomorrow will tell me once and for all if i should read it. fate, though, can definitely be persuaded by the purchase of a gift by anyone in attendance.
*in addition, summer means watching track races at alpenrose, berry picking rides to the beach at sauvie island, trips to the river. boys without shirts, in other words. be waiting.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
GENERAL UPDATE ON ALL FRONTS; or, HOW NOT TO LOOK GOOD IN PANTS
have you ever been to the suburbs? i grew up in one but always seem to forget about their true colors. and that most people live in them. but that's where "eclipse" is playing on the imax screen (things are big in the suburbs), so that's where i went yesterday to watch it.
i never finished watching "new moon," because the site i used to stream it for free made me take a marketing survey for access and, although the kfc survey just required me lying about which of kfc's chicken products i like best, the second one i took after having to close my streaming window for some now forgotten work reason was an unbelievably long offer for feminine hygiene coupons that i gave up on after twenty minutes. luckily, monique's thirteen year old sister is visiting and she caught me up. but she's also the larger reason i went to the suburbs to see "eclipse" on the imax screen, so, in a way, she just owed me an explanation for something anyway.
"eclipse" was ok except for the part in which edward talks about wanting to get married so that bella can be sure her soul is saved before she gets turned into a vampire. it's embarrassing that i'm going to argue the limits of suspending my disbelief as regards the twilight saga (which continues here, somehow), but if i have to put up with stephanie meyer's mormon crap in a $17.50 movie, i get to point out that edward is, like, 90, and that unless vampires aren't able to process experience towards growth in wisdom then his affections can't really be all that virtuous. what a waste of time.
so of course i left the theater excited about reading book four. the canal is quality, as i told lee rourke himself on july 4th when i saw him on the chat box. i also told him that he couldn't stop me from day drinking because it was independence day. lee rourke is british, so i'm not sure what time it was where he was typing or what he thought of my holiday spirit. i should have words on his book this week -- and those words will be with you. come prepared. but i've justified reading breaking dawn by insisting to myself that it will help my understanding of translation to read the japanese copy a friend offered to lend me. and wayne told me to read it. and i just want to know what happens, ok? thank you.
but in the suburbs. there's a place you can go after seeing "eclipse" on the imax screen called claim jumper. claim jumper is really big, too. and they have big deserts. and desert is what my friend miyuki (the friend who's lending me japanese book four and who got us "eclipse" on the imax screen tickets ahead of time) wanted to get for monique's sister. monique got angry at me for letting her sister get a giant brownie covered in ice cream and candy sauce. the only reason she found out was because we had to bring most of it home. i really do believe that you have to live in the suburbs to eat one by yourself in a sitting. i just finished what we brought home of the brownie. i ordered a piece of chocolate cake that was really six pieces of chocolate cake glued together with fudge. i'm about to have the rest of that too. (i wasn't able to finish mine either, which is proof that i live in the city.) i really wanted to eat the rest in the bathtub while i read the canal, because everything bad to eat seems more fun to eat in the bath; but eating and reading while sweating and without a fancy tray doesn't hold its charm for long.
so i ran after work. and i'll probably do it again tomorrow after my two dance classes, too. it's silly, but i don't think i can't eat the cake. and second desert (after a night when i ate about three) isn't the best way to stay looking good in pants. but then again, neither is will power.
update: the dessert leftovers were not finished before bedtime. night cake at 2:30 a.m.
i never finished watching "new moon," because the site i used to stream it for free made me take a marketing survey for access and, although the kfc survey just required me lying about which of kfc's chicken products i like best, the second one i took after having to close my streaming window for some now forgotten work reason was an unbelievably long offer for feminine hygiene coupons that i gave up on after twenty minutes. luckily, monique's thirteen year old sister is visiting and she caught me up. but she's also the larger reason i went to the suburbs to see "eclipse" on the imax screen, so, in a way, she just owed me an explanation for something anyway.
"eclipse" was ok except for the part in which edward talks about wanting to get married so that bella can be sure her soul is saved before she gets turned into a vampire. it's embarrassing that i'm going to argue the limits of suspending my disbelief as regards the twilight saga (which continues here, somehow), but if i have to put up with stephanie meyer's mormon crap in a $17.50 movie, i get to point out that edward is, like, 90, and that unless vampires aren't able to process experience towards growth in wisdom then his affections can't really be all that virtuous. what a waste of time.
so of course i left the theater excited about reading book four. the canal is quality, as i told lee rourke himself on july 4th when i saw him on the chat box. i also told him that he couldn't stop me from day drinking because it was independence day. lee rourke is british, so i'm not sure what time it was where he was typing or what he thought of my holiday spirit. i should have words on his book this week -- and those words will be with you. come prepared. but i've justified reading breaking dawn by insisting to myself that it will help my understanding of translation to read the japanese copy a friend offered to lend me. and wayne told me to read it. and i just want to know what happens, ok? thank you.
but in the suburbs. there's a place you can go after seeing "eclipse" on the imax screen called claim jumper. claim jumper is really big, too. and they have big deserts. and desert is what my friend miyuki (the friend who's lending me japanese book four and who got us "eclipse" on the imax screen tickets ahead of time) wanted to get for monique's sister. monique got angry at me for letting her sister get a giant brownie covered in ice cream and candy sauce. the only reason she found out was because we had to bring most of it home. i really do believe that you have to live in the suburbs to eat one by yourself in a sitting. i just finished what we brought home of the brownie. i ordered a piece of chocolate cake that was really six pieces of chocolate cake glued together with fudge. i'm about to have the rest of that too. (i wasn't able to finish mine either, which is proof that i live in the city.) i really wanted to eat the rest in the bathtub while i read the canal, because everything bad to eat seems more fun to eat in the bath; but eating and reading while sweating and without a fancy tray doesn't hold its charm for long.
so i ran after work. and i'll probably do it again tomorrow after my two dance classes, too. it's silly, but i don't think i can't eat the cake. and second desert (after a night when i ate about three) isn't the best way to stay looking good in pants. but then again, neither is will power.
update: the dessert leftovers were not finished before bedtime. night cake at 2:30 a.m.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
ON WALKING A NOT SO FINE LINE: KAZUSHIGE ABE HELPS US SOUND INFORMED
in 2006, the nobel committee awarded orhan pamuk its prize for literature based on his discovery of "new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures." but the greater value of pamuk's beautifully described but undisguisedly self-conscious fiction lies in its investigation of what are often the merely situational differences between the craft of timely storytelling and plagiarism. the meta-drama of that theme has played out for pamuk himself in the charges of plagiarism that have dogged him throughout his career. and that's not irony, it's the point.
literary theft is not so terrible a challenge to the world of belles lettres as someone like me should generally be thought to argue. i would, rather, go so far as to say that some of best works of fiction are the ones that are aware of their unoriginality. indeed, the legacy of twentieth century literature, including in its non-western manifestations, has largely been to demonstrate the insurmountability of repetition and overlap (be that among peers or across eras). the art of the steal, so to speak, has become a respected and stimulating genre in itself. which is not to recommend outright plagiarism, or advance a system of literary production under which authors are not secure in their rights to their works and to proper recognition and compensation. but stories themselves are cheap, and new ones are nearly as rare as conventional produce at a portland potluck.
but even for that overwritten disclaimer, which was, in case either of us missed my point, meant to indicate that i find absolutely nothing wrong with a book bearing heavy narrative similarities to another work, my humdrum impression of kazushige abe's individual projection (ip from here) has its foundation on those very grounds.
ip is written as a diary, the diary of onuma (no first name given), a late twenty-something film school graduate working as a projectionist at a double feature theater in shibuya, tokyo. the diary format is useful in restricting the perspective of the novel to onuma's personal experience, especially insofar as that enables abe to hide the possibilities that certain events might have been edited by hallucination or that certain characters might be projections of onuma himself -- hide them at least until onuma confronts those possibilities on his own. the novel also begins in medias res, and a diary is an easy vantage from which onuma can narrate the events of the five years between his graduation from film school and his return to tokyo while saving abe some literary face.
those events, by the way, surround onuma's involvement with a private martial arts academy in his hometown, that involvement having begun with onuma and a group of his classmates deciding to shoot a documentary film about the eccentric middle aged man, masaki (no first name given), who opened the academy not long after his arrival in the town. sure enough (which is a slightly more deferential way of saying OF COURSE), onuma and friends abandon the documentary and devote themselves to masaki, the group and to being trained as super spy killers. after the group's ransom of a local yakuza boss for a (dud? we never find out) plutonium bomb and masaki's arrest, onuma is back in tokyo and pulled back into his past by the (accidental? we never find out) death of five of his compatriots in a highway crash. that event is recounted by onuma early in the book and serves as onuma's motivation for relating the story of the academy. oh yeah, and onuma has migraines that he treats with forced, irregular sleep; he entertains himself in the projection booth by splicing frames from a pile of discards into damaged reels; and the movie theater explodes at the book's climax right when onuma starts filling in the blanks he's written. yes. ip is japanese fight club.
i don't think that kazushige abe reads english. actually, i've no reason to speculate in either direction. and, to be fair, i don't think that chuck palahniuk can read japanese. moot points though, really, because the two books were published almost simultaneously. (again to be fair, palahniuk's saw shelves slightly earlier.) and there's nothing to be speculated from the projectionist connection since abe himself is a film school graduate and intended to spend his career in film even after the success of his first novel. what's more, ip is uniquely tokyo with its yakuza and early teenage prostitutes and questionable pornography and never late trains (that fourth one, by the way, really is the most exciting and consistently baffling). i suppose there's a slim chance that abe read fight club quickly and meant for onuma, bored and quintessentially post-industrial, to be projecting tyler durden onto his own experience. i especially like that possibility (understanding its near impossibility) because it's predicated on either of two opposing a priori: that my japanese is insufficient to have caught the appropriate references or that i've read entirely too much into the book. and, ladies, that's why language is worth it.
ip just didn't do it as well. palahniuk's punchy vernacular does a story like this one better. it's the flesh on the skeleton that gives the import of character to the common sentiments of a generation. the anxious sobriety with which abe writes onuma is more appropriate of a simple thriller. maybe i don't have the appropriate cultural cv to appreciate that abe's telling is just more innately japanese.
but i really just say so to be gracious. his debut, day for night, treats the same post-bubble generation -- the first to grow up without want and then see the diminishing returns of a society poorly invested -- and its obsession with fame and the chosen status of the individual, and does so with (very literally) awe inspiringly sophisticated syntax and through a structure that follows from the protagonist's devotion to performance and the eye of the camera. and it's not the case that abe just did his best work early, because his more recent works, as maturity would dictate, exchange the convoluted sentences for an equally impressive diction that -- even for its sometimes confusing erudition -- is perfect in its nuance for telling abe's favorite aspects of japanese society (more alienation, nukes and porn). even better, those works are no less aware of the importance of artistic performance.
i suppose, for one final temper to my initial reaction to ip, that i'm just not up on my philosophy. i still don't know how to correctly translate the title. individual projection might in fact be correct, but in that case, it means less to do with film than psychology in that we should read it literally: the "individual projection" is onuma's diary itself (and there doesn't seem to be any sort of shooting technique or moving picture principle named by that term). but, it's funny, because that understanding should then take us right back to the screen inasmuch as we understand how strongly abe is connected to movie making and how much contemporary psycho-philosophical analysis, pertaining here specifically to what we should assume is happening beyond the "frame" of onuma's diary, has been influenced by film (never finished that book, by the way). and perhaps, that specific connection is why ip has been translated into french, as i mentioned here.
but, then again, maybe ip was just a sensation, and maybe the french are as willing to translate sensationalism as they are to treat it as fine literature in their own language. or maybe, as is pointed out in this delicious essay at bookslut, it's good to have a reminder that foreign books aren't as a rule any better than what's on the domestic market, even if it's easy to romanticize the value of what we read in a foreign languages.
so, it's not displeasure at abe for having written a novel on a duplicate premise that has me against ip, but rather that he didn't do the idea as well as he might have. and, being fair for the last time, chuck palahniuk has kicked that dead horse enough times to bring it back to life. but i'm going to scoff at ip anyway. read the rest.
or wait, you can't. so then second thoughts. who is my audience if it can't argue or, for that matter, take me at my word that the book exists to begin with? i won't deny that criticism is more the projection of the individual than any other art, but suddenly i feel an impassioned sympathy with onuma. and, sadly, it's only the wine that makes bearable that reconciliation.
literary theft is not so terrible a challenge to the world of belles lettres as someone like me should generally be thought to argue. i would, rather, go so far as to say that some of best works of fiction are the ones that are aware of their unoriginality. indeed, the legacy of twentieth century literature, including in its non-western manifestations, has largely been to demonstrate the insurmountability of repetition and overlap (be that among peers or across eras). the art of the steal, so to speak, has become a respected and stimulating genre in itself. which is not to recommend outright plagiarism, or advance a system of literary production under which authors are not secure in their rights to their works and to proper recognition and compensation. but stories themselves are cheap, and new ones are nearly as rare as conventional produce at a portland potluck.
but even for that overwritten disclaimer, which was, in case either of us missed my point, meant to indicate that i find absolutely nothing wrong with a book bearing heavy narrative similarities to another work, my humdrum impression of kazushige abe's individual projection (ip from here) has its foundation on those very grounds.
ip is written as a diary, the diary of onuma (no first name given), a late twenty-something film school graduate working as a projectionist at a double feature theater in shibuya, tokyo. the diary format is useful in restricting the perspective of the novel to onuma's personal experience, especially insofar as that enables abe to hide the possibilities that certain events might have been edited by hallucination or that certain characters might be projections of onuma himself -- hide them at least until onuma confronts those possibilities on his own. the novel also begins in medias res, and a diary is an easy vantage from which onuma can narrate the events of the five years between his graduation from film school and his return to tokyo while saving abe some literary face.
those events, by the way, surround onuma's involvement with a private martial arts academy in his hometown, that involvement having begun with onuma and a group of his classmates deciding to shoot a documentary film about the eccentric middle aged man, masaki (no first name given), who opened the academy not long after his arrival in the town. sure enough (which is a slightly more deferential way of saying OF COURSE), onuma and friends abandon the documentary and devote themselves to masaki, the group and to being trained as super spy killers. after the group's ransom of a local yakuza boss for a (dud? we never find out) plutonium bomb and masaki's arrest, onuma is back in tokyo and pulled back into his past by the (accidental? we never find out) death of five of his compatriots in a highway crash. that event is recounted by onuma early in the book and serves as onuma's motivation for relating the story of the academy. oh yeah, and onuma has migraines that he treats with forced, irregular sleep; he entertains himself in the projection booth by splicing frames from a pile of discards into damaged reels; and the movie theater explodes at the book's climax right when onuma starts filling in the blanks he's written. yes. ip is japanese fight club.
i don't think that kazushige abe reads english. actually, i've no reason to speculate in either direction. and, to be fair, i don't think that chuck palahniuk can read japanese. moot points though, really, because the two books were published almost simultaneously. (again to be fair, palahniuk's saw shelves slightly earlier.) and there's nothing to be speculated from the projectionist connection since abe himself is a film school graduate and intended to spend his career in film even after the success of his first novel. what's more, ip is uniquely tokyo with its yakuza and early teenage prostitutes and questionable pornography and never late trains (that fourth one, by the way, really is the most exciting and consistently baffling). i suppose there's a slim chance that abe read fight club quickly and meant for onuma, bored and quintessentially post-industrial, to be projecting tyler durden onto his own experience. i especially like that possibility (understanding its near impossibility) because it's predicated on either of two opposing a priori: that my japanese is insufficient to have caught the appropriate references or that i've read entirely too much into the book. and, ladies, that's why language is worth it.
ip just didn't do it as well. palahniuk's punchy vernacular does a story like this one better. it's the flesh on the skeleton that gives the import of character to the common sentiments of a generation. the anxious sobriety with which abe writes onuma is more appropriate of a simple thriller. maybe i don't have the appropriate cultural cv to appreciate that abe's telling is just more innately japanese.
but i really just say so to be gracious. his debut, day for night, treats the same post-bubble generation -- the first to grow up without want and then see the diminishing returns of a society poorly invested -- and its obsession with fame and the chosen status of the individual, and does so with (very literally) awe inspiringly sophisticated syntax and through a structure that follows from the protagonist's devotion to performance and the eye of the camera. and it's not the case that abe just did his best work early, because his more recent works, as maturity would dictate, exchange the convoluted sentences for an equally impressive diction that -- even for its sometimes confusing erudition -- is perfect in its nuance for telling abe's favorite aspects of japanese society (more alienation, nukes and porn). even better, those works are no less aware of the importance of artistic performance.
i suppose, for one final temper to my initial reaction to ip, that i'm just not up on my philosophy. i still don't know how to correctly translate the title. individual projection might in fact be correct, but in that case, it means less to do with film than psychology in that we should read it literally: the "individual projection" is onuma's diary itself (and there doesn't seem to be any sort of shooting technique or moving picture principle named by that term). but, it's funny, because that understanding should then take us right back to the screen inasmuch as we understand how strongly abe is connected to movie making and how much contemporary psycho-philosophical analysis, pertaining here specifically to what we should assume is happening beyond the "frame" of onuma's diary, has been influenced by film (never finished that book, by the way). and perhaps, that specific connection is why ip has been translated into french, as i mentioned here.
but, then again, maybe ip was just a sensation, and maybe the french are as willing to translate sensationalism as they are to treat it as fine literature in their own language. or maybe, as is pointed out in this delicious essay at bookslut, it's good to have a reminder that foreign books aren't as a rule any better than what's on the domestic market, even if it's easy to romanticize the value of what we read in a foreign languages.
so, it's not displeasure at abe for having written a novel on a duplicate premise that has me against ip, but rather that he didn't do the idea as well as he might have. and, being fair for the last time, chuck palahniuk has kicked that dead horse enough times to bring it back to life. but i'm going to scoff at ip anyway. read the rest.
or wait, you can't. so then second thoughts. who is my audience if it can't argue or, for that matter, take me at my word that the book exists to begin with? i won't deny that criticism is more the projection of the individual than any other art, but suddenly i feel an impassioned sympathy with onuma. and, sadly, it's only the wine that makes bearable that reconciliation.
Friday, July 2, 2010
ON THE ART OF THE COP OUT; or, WHEN WE'RE NOT LAZY WE'RE DRUNK
lately, anyway. but a week is far too long to go without a substantive post, so before a week would pass we're delivering some fluff. announcing: the 'looking good in pants' blog roll. we have one now. it is currently limited only by exclusivity (certainly not by neglect, because you're sure we read more sites than those dozen or so). but it will also inevitably grow, and we're happy to entertain suggestions.
for everyone who's been waiting for our takes on the spring/summer 2011 men's shows from milan and paris, distillations of most of the collections are available from some of our devotees. we do not promise to deliver on that front. although it would be powerfully fun, there are just too many other posts lined up on the brain to expect from ourselves a timely and comprehensive review. in lieu of a complete analysis: dear thom browne, the space suits were just gimmicky, and the clothes that were revealed from under them were nothing surprising. i love your suits, but just because "mad men" made it cool to dress like your designs doesn't mean you get to rest on your laurels. if pushed, i will call off all orders to have my more cosmopolitanly situated friends steal me things from your stores. also, those jackets were too wide. love, christopher.
individual projection is finished. much, much to say. but not now. i'm going to spend some time sorting out my pronouns. advice is welcome.
for everyone who's been waiting for our takes on the spring/summer 2011 men's shows from milan and paris, distillations of most of the collections are available from some of our devotees. we do not promise to deliver on that front. although it would be powerfully fun, there are just too many other posts lined up on the brain to expect from ourselves a timely and comprehensive review. in lieu of a complete analysis: dear thom browne, the space suits were just gimmicky, and the clothes that were revealed from under them were nothing surprising. i love your suits, but just because "mad men" made it cool to dress like your designs doesn't mean you get to rest on your laurels. if pushed, i will call off all orders to have my more cosmopolitanly situated friends steal me things from your stores. also, those jackets were too wide. love, christopher.
individual projection is finished. much, much to say. but not now. i'm going to spend some time sorting out my pronouns. advice is welcome.
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