Perverted By Language

Guess we're screwed.

2008-06-18T16:35:00.001+01:00

I ain't cheatin with a machine...

2007-11-19T17:29:00.000Z

...it just makes my voice sound clean.

My Baby Apparently Loves MIA

2007-11-01T16:17:00.000Z

If you're feeling sinister...

2007-10-30T18:18:00.000Z

Gabba Gabba One of Us

2007-10-30T18:17:00.000Z

6 Months Off

2007-10-27T18:18:00.000+01:00

Recent Internet Searches

2007-10-18T17:24:00.000+01:00

mastitis
breastfeeding and ibuprofen
breastfeeding and cocaine
"we played richard marx at our wedding"
Lafcadio Hearne
"Jackson Jones"
"Jackson Clanton"
"Jackson's Hole"
jaxworld blogger
Hubig's Pies
Sunshine Nursery, Brighton
Pennard Hill Farm Cottages
Dick Van Dyke
at what temperature is fever dangerous?

2007-10-09T15:27:00.000+01:00

Stimulus

2007-09-29T11:09:00.000+01:00

Me in print.

WITHOUT me IT'S JUST aweso.

2007-09-27T17:23:00.000+01:00

Summer 07

2007-09-27T17:21:00.000+01:00

2007-03-07T14:37:00.000Z

2007-02-12T10:11:00.001Z

Let me know
if you're coming
and I'll set aside a
mask and some beads
just for you.

Baking

2007-01-10T18:14:00.000Z

Australian Lamingtons and banana-nut bread from a 1940s Southern cookbook.

New Year's Day, Brighton Marina

2007-01-03T16:48:00.000Z

2006-12-28T17:08:00.000Z

the science of the thing; but ye seem to me to be born blind, and believe in your way you do still care something for your daughter after coming in the afternoon, with porters bringing chairs and tables, found it was surely a strange neighbourhood and house for a young lady to be

Insomnia Cure, Hong Kong

2006-12-20T12:38:00.000Z

First, choose the type of zombie you'll be confronting. They can be classic, slow-movers as in the original Night of the Living Dead, or they can move fast, 28 Days Later-style. Are animals affected? Because you'll want to stay away from the wet markets and other places where locals buy live food. Think through the details of the infection. Are you immune only because you haven't been bitten? Or is this a more apocalyptic situation--is there a disease you alone are immune to, in addition to the zombies (a sort of double alien threat you'll eventually have to confront, a la Day of the Triffids)? What kills the zombies? Is it the traditional destroying of the brainstem, and if so, are organs able to live on independently of their bodies if this brain stem remains intact? Do the zombies retreat when it's light outside? Take some time to consider all these possibilities before deciding.

Next, start to plan your immediate escape route. You are in a massive modern hotel with non-opening windows. This is not good. Think through every escape route, every guest, worker, visiting prostitute that might now be wandering the hallways, either livng or zombified. Who will you save? Is it worth checking down the hallway that your mother-in-law has not yet been turned into a zombie? If you call her on the phone, will the ringing of the phone alert the zombies in the hallway to her living presence? The elevators are certainly not safe, but the emeregency stairwells are a deathtrap as well. What would it take to break the windows and crawl along the ledge to mother-in-law's room, and then to make it all the way down to the walkway along the bay? What sort(s) of weapon can be found in a hotel room? Is there any way of making it the eight storeys downstairs to one of the restaurants where more suitable tools could be found? Or is the risk of re-animated abolone, sharks' fins, gigantic lobsters, and night cleaners too great? Consider all of this many times over, and in different ways.

What are your prospects if you escape the hotel? Where will you go? Hong Kong is an isalnd; you are on Kowloon, on the mainland. It makes sense to get across the bay and eventually band together with other living people to clear the island of all zombies, using the surrounding water as a barrier. Of course, this will be a problem if they learn to walk underwater as in the remake of Dawn of the Dead.

As always, the only hope of long-term survival is knowing how to pilot a plane or helicoptor. But this thought doesn't help your insomnia. Instead, re-imagine your escape plan from the hotel to the island, and how you go about hiding from, and disposing of, zombies once there. Keep going. It'll be light out soon.

Excerpts From Recent Text Messages

2006-12-08T19:24:00.000Z

Those doorknobs are £62. Each.

Making my mark.

Well, Angus, you want Zoe, you gots to talk to me!

Landslide at Hay Heath, might not be going anywhere.

It's not like they're Jean Painleve.

Don't vomit on me!

We are Ready to Rock with Debbie.

Liverpool is weird.

The woman's father ran the paper mill in Crossett!

Butcher has good lookin mince.

CARRIE!

It's a dark day isn't it.

Go Carrie!

Oh wait, you can't get this text.

Is Strada too fancy?

Alcoholic Gun Club

2006-12-02T12:18:00.000Z

Spam of the Day

2006-12-02T12:14:00.000Z

Why is the crowing of a rooster so regular, so persistent?
Although these swallows often nest as single pairs in cavities or nesting boxes, both adults and juveniles now gather on electrical wires by the dozens, socializing before they migrate. Driving the freeway or a narrow country road, you may glance up to a light pole where a large hawk sits in plain view. Ravens often travel in pairs, while crows are seen in larger groups.
Without flapping, it traces a leisurely, rising circle.
Herons nest in colonies, constructing their stick nests in adjoining trees or cramming several nests into one tree.
Quick and agile in rushing white water, they dive to the bottom of mountain streams for food, and use fast-flowing rivers for breeding.
This nondescript bird steps off a small boulder right into the torrent, and begins to peer under water.
Small forest birds, such as nuthatches and creepers may spend the night huddled together in tree cavities.
Putting out a feeder is easy.
Male Raggiana Birds of Paradise perform elaborate displays to attract females, sometimes even hanging upside-down with their wings pointing upward.
Just for a LARK, MARTIN and JAY decided to have a SWALLOW.
Their lives and ours depend on the daily transformation of sunlight, through photosynthesis, into energy.

Guy Fawkes Night

2006-11-22T16:45:00.000Z

This Weekend

2006-11-10T13:46:00.000Z

Going to this, wish I were going to this, feeling inspired by this, unpacking boxes, writing about Chapter 5 of this.

Getting There

2006-11-10T13:41:00.000Z

Befores and Afters

Today

2006-11-01T10:23:00.000Z

Carpets ripped out and removed; wallpaper removed; upstairs floor sanded, stained and varnished; upstairs rooms painted, downstairs prepped; closet doors removed; kitchen door removed; kitchen cleaned, awaiting replacement; shed and patio cleared; floorboards awaiting placement on Friday; light fixtures ordered; rest of painting happening now; old flat packed; utilities switched over; closet floor varnished and walls painted and bathroom deepcleaned tomorrow; attic conversion starting Saturday; electrician and plumber coming next week; etc etc etc

Ectoplasmic Residue

2006-11-01T10:21:00.000Z

A Few Days Ago

2006-11-01T10:20:00.000Z

2 Weeks Ago

2006-10-31T15:49:00.000Z

Choosing them isn't.

Please Stand By

2006-10-17T20:48:00.000+01:00

Experiencing Technical Difficulties

2006-10-01T11:49:00.000+01:00

Piper decided to pull her weight (seeing as she's not contributed much to the purchase of our new house) and helped M. pack for his weekend in Berlin.

Magic Music Days

2006-09-29T15:40:00.000+01:00

Today as I walked past the our neighbourhood chemist where the young homeless drug addicts queue up in the mornings to get their methadone, I noticed one of them was wearing a very garish and familiar t-shirt. The shirt was bright purple and flourescent pink and yellow and green and stated "Disney Magic Music Days!". I once owned a couple of these t-shirts because I endured the magic music days of Disney World at least a couple of times in junior high and high school, after our school band, like many others througout America, spent humilating weekends washing cars and selling candy door to door to raise money to pay Disney to bus us the many many hours to Florida to march in some parade around the amusement park. My guess is that Euro Disney has started a similar programme for kids in Europe, and just look where the UK ones end up: outside the chemist waiting to layer what's left of last night's heroin with NHS meth.

Somethin' Strange in My Neighborhood

2006-09-29T15:32:00.000+01:00

Coming across
this window cleaner's
mode of transport
--it even says
"Who you gonna call?"--
thrilled me
even more than
all the guys
dressed like
my boys
at Bestival.
Gotta get
that thesis
written...

2006-09-28T14:13:00.000+01:00

M. was in France for 24 hours to assess a show and he came home around 6am smelling of New Orleans! I haven't got to chat with him yet about what he ate or what else he got up to, but his clothes have that distinct and yet impossible-to-put-your-finger-on aroma of sweet and spice and pralines and red beans and rice and beignets and spices that go in a crawfish boil that you sometimes smell randomly around parts of New Orleans. The only other time I've smelled that in Europe was when we went to a Senegalese restaurant in Paris a couple of years ago that served the best boudin I'd had in years. In fact, it was the only boudin I'd had in years.

Ghosts in My New House

2006-09-28T13:21:00.000+01:00

We are purchasing a house in Kemptown, meaning we’ll stick around the UK for another year or two at least. It was supposedly used to house workers at the mill that was in the area in the 19th century. We take possession next Wednesday.

I'm two Fall songs in one lately ("There's a Ghost in My House" and "My New House"). Three times this month I have dreamed that the house is haunted. The first dream was terrifying and short; I was being chased in the dark. In the second dream, the current elderly owner of the house was desperate to impart some information to me. She did so in the form of a book of newspaper clippings that described the death of a little girl (Rosemary?) and her mum, who then appeared to me as ghosts. There was something to do with facial mutilation maybe. When I woke up M. asked if I'd had a nightmare and I felt sad and insisted on calling it a “scary dream” because "nightmare" seemed insulting to the ghosts somehow. The third dream had to with ghosts haunting us overhead as streaks of light and sound and me having to shout at them that we meant no harm and wanted to live in peace with them and that they better stop.

In response, I've been re-reading Anelia Jaffe's Jungian An Archetypal Approach To Death Dreams and Ghosts. Though simplisitic Jung-talk about the collectivity of supernatural experiences, it nonetheless drew my attention the figure of the gray man that Anna Karenina sees in her dreams, and then again just as she throws herself under the train. Funny to see him described by Jaffe as a "spirit-maniken" with all the automatonic connotations that holds for me. What to make of ghosts in dreams anyway? When two such vectors of the uncanny meet, maybe it kinda becomes banal and overly obvious. A pair of flapping wings back to the time of the US Civil War, as Mark E sang. As expected.

Bestival

2006-09-18T19:18:00.000+01:00

Saturday, 5:45am

Pearls of Genius

2006-09-05T16:00:00.000+01:00

My brother has written a funny account of his acting job for a Chinese film about Peral S. Buck (who was played by his girlfriend). On set on Mt Lushan, he took this photo of some beautiful prose of Pearl's, which reveals why she was so lauded as writer:

Years Gone By and I'd Say We've Kicked Some Ass

2006-09-05T15:51:00.000+01:00

Happy 3rd year, bbbbbbaby! Who knew this song was about extreme sports?

I Thought It Warranted a Cake

2006-08-30T16:50:00.000+01:00

What I Didn't Tell You That Night

2006-08-29T21:55:00.000+01:00

On this day last year I returned home from trip to Thailand to discover that the hurricane we all thought hadn’t harmed New Orleans too badly had actually precipitated the biggest disaster in US history. I spent the end of 2005 in my favorite city, and wrote this in mid-January upon returning to the UK:

We'd driven down, and had dropped off the extra rental car at the Louis Armstrong airport, caught a cab, and, eyes peeled for any signs of damage, took off down the highway into the city. As we'd searched for the rental car drop-off we had seen a lot full of brand new white FEMA trailers all lined up in neat little rows, windows still wrapped in factory plastic. As we drove through the outskirts of the city we saw tattered billboards, chain hotels with broken glass in the windows, parking lots with a few dusty, seemingly abandoned cars. Nothing out of the ordinary for this place, the corrupt and dirty state where I've spent half of my life. It's part of the charm for some of us, the reason others always choose to forget us. From time to time we'd pass a suburban subdivision and catch sight of a patch of blue on a roof. But there was nothing to suggest the damage we'd seen on the news; we'd see this a couple of days later as we disaster-toured through St. Bernard and the 7th Ward, my dad snapping pix from the trunk of my parents' SUV that we'd all managed to squeeze into. It was late afternoon as we hit Treme. We had fleeting glimpses of the old housing projects, but not enough sight of them to see how these self-contained near-villages, formerly full of deep bass beats and people walking, driving, barbecuing, partying and napping on porches, had been abandoned.

We entered the Quarter on St. Ann because we were meeting our families at Place d'Armes, our 3rd or 4th and final accommodation option because our first choices in Treme and the Marigny had never re-opened or were occupied by contracters doing important rebuilding works for the city such as sorting out Saks 5th Avenue and the mall. I opened a window hoping to catch the old familiar smell. It was faint but still there. Spices, pralines, and from time to time urine and beer. Intoxicating. We did tourist-y things in the Quarter that first evening because your family had never visted the city before. Things were tame but jumping; the curfew had recently been extended. There were military vehicles along Bourbon and yankee animal rescue brigades and contracter-tourists strolling around with those ubiquitous flourescent grenade drinks that started appearing in the 1990s; the whole thing felt a bit like cinematic Casablanca, an insider place for outsiders to get away from the surrounding hell. We dropped in to a few mostly empty bars and listened to some live music. I watched the bandleader at one place sing "All of Me" ("go on take all of me, Katrina") unsmilingly, his eyes darting out to the sidewalk outside every couple of minutes to judge whether they'd get more than our table in that night. Down the street at the more populated Fritzell's, we asked the band to play "Waltzing Matilda" for you and your family. They told us later, as people would keep telling us over the coming days--sometimes accompanied by tears, sometimes by unexpected bear hugs--how happy they were that we had come back, that we were there with them, and that they themselves had gotten to come home, however many pieces there were to pick up or to try futiley to replace.

It had been four months since I had been living with the news stories, the pictures, the testaments on blogs. With the big and little daily news of Editor B, Jim Louis, The Book, Cliff, Clayton, Michael H., World Class New Orleans, Dangerblond, Poppy Z. B. and so many others, some of whom know each other in real life, some of whom met through blogging, others who maybe don't even know about each other but who are living the same thing in very different ways. I recorded--and continue to record--so much of it, sometimes with sadness, sometimes with hope, and sometimes taken beyond any disecernable feelings by the surreality of it all. Four months I'd spent compiling and mourning for something that I never had any real claim to to begin with. Moping around, obsessing about it all as if I'd been unwillingly separated from some dream boy I was teenager-y smitten with, you said, annoyedly, at one point. And then suddenly I was there in the middle of it, not quite believing it was all still standing, and yet not quite believing that it would ever be back to normal, to the way I remembered it as a little girl on fieldtrips or as an adult on--well, adult trips. Everywhere were little signs, even around the Quarter. The closed shops, the abbreviated menus, the absence of well-known characters and the lemon ice stands, the darkened aquarium, the midwestern college kids working in the tourist bars (like the Pat O'Brien's waiter who tried to fob me off--or was so green he didn't know--about Mr. Eddie, who we knew had perished in the flood). But mostly it was the people we saw everywhere who seemed to have been blown completely away and then had randomly blown back again, sometimes in pieces and sometimes not where they started from and not yet back to where they were meant to be. There was a sense of shell-shockedness about everyone we met. And yet everyone was happy to be home. As was I, in my own way.

That first night it was already getting hot; it would be one of the hottest New Year's Eves on record in a couple of days. We turned on the noisy ceilng fan to sleep in our room that smelled damp and musty from being shut off for four months; we were the first to sleep in it since late August. I went to the bathroom to get ready for bed, and then it all hit me at once. I couldn't stop crying. It all flooded out of me, all the compulsive collecting and containing and digesting I'd been doing as "research" for some film or book project was seeping out of the careful archives I'd created for it and was all around me, suffocatingly big, frustratingly at a stand-still, with no certain future and a washed-away past. And yet I was there, right in the middle of it all, and so much was still standing, and how could I be here just four months later when in September I'd thought it might have all washed away by the time I got back?

I couldn't tell you this properly that night because I was crying too hard, and you were annoyed, and maybe a little scared at this sudden outburst from me, and the way that a place and my past could haunt me so much in the present. So I came to bed and sobbed as silently as I could, thinking of all the people who will never get to come back, even to visit like we were. I thought of everything that surrounded us: the thousands of former pets who'd been left behind, driven frantic and wild by fear and hunger and who were at that moment running in packs all throughout the dark city; the tonnes and tonnes of collapsed and waterlogged wood, bricks and clay that had once stood strong and tall, and that had been built by someone's grandfather, who was proud to call the 9th Ward home at one time; the abandoned carcases of cars and boats and, we'd find out later, people; dolls, photographs, books, and the other scattered artefacts of people's lives, encased in mud in the sidewalks and front yards, waiting futilely for their owners to come back for them, or to at least give them a decent burial; the stifling darkness and quiet of the rest of the city, surrounding us on all sides.

The next morning we got up and had beignets and cafe au laits and were tourists again.

Big in China

2006-08-28T12:01:00.000+01:00

My brother and his girlfriend are playing American author Pearl S. Buck and her brother in a film by CCTV, China’s aptly named national television company.

They just finished shooting on Mt. Lushan near Jiujang this weekend.

The Happy Headlines Just Keep Rolling In

2006-08-28T10:45:00.000+01:00

The UK's "one year later" reporting on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast has, as expected, got me a bit down. Of course I’m glad it’s actually in the news again. It’s disturbing to me when it’s not. No news is not good news. But I can’t help but wonder whether the stories that darken the papers today and tomorrow (and then inevitably disappear till Mardi Gras) engender much sympathy among those who already think New Orleanians who’ve elected to stay or who are still trying to return home are crazy and that the whole city should be left to Ernesto or whichever hurricane finally finishes it off.

NOLA’s doing a better job than I could of compiling the anniversary coverage appearing nationally and internationally.

But if you want to get a real picture of the daily struggles and triumphs happening in New Orleans, and a sense for why it’s the greatest city in the world, despite its old and new problems, you can’t do much better than starting with this list of New Orleans bloggers.

Many of these bloggers were involved in organising the Rising Tide Conference that took place over the weekend, a conference that aimed to "dispel myths, promote facts, share personal testimonies, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels." They "aim to be a 'real life' demonstration of internet activism as the nation prepares to mark the one year anniversary of a massive natural disaster followed by governmental failures on a similar scale."

How Did You Know?

2006-08-27T10:25:00.000+01:00

A Tekken competition
and dancing till dawn
to Public Enemy and The Fall
= my idea of perfect happiness.

Thanks for Friday night, guys!

"Presenting our case to strangers in our neighbor to the north, America ... well, that will take some doing."

2006-08-23T20:51:00.000+01:00

Apt quote from New Orleans author and blogger Poppy Z. Brite, who is probably one of quite a few writers and other New Orleans figures being asked to give their take on the state of things in the national press as the anniversary of Katrina nears. As a regular reader of her blog (but not her novels yet), I have faith she can pull it off. And if she can't, we make like "the Muslims" and create a Hezbollah-like organisation that looks after things in the absence of any real help from elected officials given the “state within a non-state” that New Orleans is, and always has been.

I both dread and look forward to the UK coverage of the anniversary. Around this time last year I was having to explain to my bemused--bemused!--middle-England neighbour that it wasn't just "stupidity" that caused people to not evacuate. I'm not sure if he had even registered that thousands of people (and animals) were still missing, trapped or dying as we spoke. I’m not even sure if I or even the evacuees registered it at that point.

I'm getting drunk just thinking about this! Being the media-slut I am when it comes to all things New Orleans, it's going to be a hard week.

Voodoo

2006-08-23T17:19:00.001+01:00

I've been in Edinburgh the last few days with these freaks:

Best New Orleans Recovery Plan I've Heard

2006-08-11T12:26:00.000+01:00

"We have a silent majority here that really believes in violence and believes that America's against them. You remember the ramifications from New Orleans, that a lot of dissatisfied people here could ultimately join up with the Muslims or sympathize with them. It's a scary thing here as well as in the UK."

--Charles Payne on one of Fox "News"'s "business" programmes yesterday

Sympathy for the plight of Muslims, another opressed group of people in post 9-11 America?

An awareness of the government's apathy towards New Orleans and the popular hatred of and prejudice against its evacuees?

I'd say it's most definitely time for an organised revolution of dissatisfied residents and exiles of my favourite city, and I'll be the first to join up. I hope it leaves you quaking in your Prada boots Mr Payne.

Welcome Home to Me

2006-08-10T09:35:00.000+01:00

I was looking for the Psychadelic Furs to get me back in the mood of being back in the UK, but I found this instead. What a wanker.

Houston, Again.

2006-08-07T22:01:00.000+01:00

Castanets on my ipod: we could have taken any of these roads, but nobody knows about this one we chose, and who knows friend how far it goes.

I remember lying in bed in our hotel room in NYC a few months ago, feeling the immensity of the USA. Roads, waterways, tracks all snaking around our hotel and out of the city, across rivers and mountains and plains, like a living, pulsing vascular system. Lost highways through dark trees, modern ovepasses around skyscrapers and bypassing ancient downtowns below, suburban interstates strectching for miles and miles before giving way to plains, little capillaries reaching into the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic. We could have gotten into a car and taken any of these roads out of the city. We could have driven through mountains and fields and over river bridges, and we could have been in New Orleans or Little Rock the very next day, in the Texas dessert twilight or the LA airport to Oz in two. An overnight road down south leads straight to my parents, my childhood, my past. It was just one of many roads, right outside our hotel room.

It could start here, I remember thinking. We could get in a car and go down any of these roads. They're all connected. All okay. Everything pulsing like blood and in harmony. Everything connected.

Here at the airport in Houston it's raining and steam is rising off the runways in the dusk and the 100F air, and all the roads I see lead to the sky and then disappear. Even a phone call feels like a stretch like now. I can't make things fit together.

Rodeo Time

2006-08-05T00:25:00.000+01:00

Road Kill Record

2006-08-04T20:00:00.000+01:00

AR/LA Hwys. 82, 78, 157, 371; 21/07-03/08

Armadillos: 6
Bats: 1
Birds of Prey: 2
Bobcats: 1
Butterflies: 10+
Cats: 2
Deer: 7
Dogs: 3
Dragonflies: 20+
Fowl: 1
Frogs: 3
Migratory Birds: 1
Possums: 7
Rabbits: 4
Raccoons: 3
Snakes: 1
Squirrels: 2
Texas Grasshoppers: 1
Turtles: 1
Unidentifiable masses of fur: 10+
Waterbirds: 1

Sum Good Eats

2006-08-03T23:58:00.000+01:00

Lethally

2006-08-01T22:31:00.000+01:00

Flanagans knowing blue eye took in everything. She just dropped out of the race as if she startedrunning backwards. His eagerness, burning in his eyes, sent pleasant little shiversthrough her. If it washer you were for marrying youd have nothing to worry about.

Hey MLJ

2006-08-01T05:28:00.000+01:00

Phallic Long Distance Dedication. A moi de toi, xx.

Mr Florence

2006-07-26T00:43:00.000+01:00

I am visiting the US and have acquired a Pandora's Box of sorts. Here in the small southern town where I spent my high school years, there is an old cinema that's been around since the mid-1930s. It is called the Cameo Trio. At one time it was one of three cinemas in town, but as people here became more conservative and inward-looking along with the rest of America, the other two shut down. Today, people who want to see blockbusters usually drive to one of the huge multiplexes in one of the surrounding towns. The Cameo has never had a reputation for cleanliness nor for offering any kind of great, movie-going experience. Nonetheless, I and many others feel affectionate towards the place, in no small part due to Mr. W.P. Florence.

Mr Florence ran the Cameo from at least the late 1930s (I have in my possession documents that verify this) until just before his death a few years ago. He was a well-known "character" around town, always dressed in a scruffy gray suit and large black lather shoes, his hair greased back messily. His parents had money, he himself apparently had oil interests (as correspondence of his from senators Fulbright and McClellan suggests), and he attended the same liberal arts university that I did, before a brief stint in the military. Despite owning two residences in town, in his later years he was apparently living out of a backroom of the Cameo. My dad recalls once leaving some reading glasses behind in the cinema, and being led to this room to retrieve them; it was filled on all walls, ceiling to floor, with old newspapers, with only just enough room for a rickety old cot.

The state of this makeshift living space is indicative of the state of the cinema as a whole. It had amazing tile and mirror bathrooms, complete with a huge powder room for the ladies which connected to the "Crying Room" that was attached to the downstairs auditorium. However, everything was always a complete mess. The joke around town was that if you went to the Cameo you might just stay there, as it was impossible to pry your feet from the sticky floor. The viewing experience was less than ideal as well; movies might sometimes cut out in the middle and only if you were lucky would sound come from all speakers and be present during the whole movie.

Mr Florence was apparently well aware of the state of his theatre. My parents once observed another town "character," a strange and moneyed old lady we knew, tell him off about sticking to the floor as she tried to leave her seat. He promptly sent her a bouquet of flowers, and others concur that this was a common deed with him. He never changed the things people complained about, but he did charm everyone.

A few years ago Mr. Florence sold the Cameo to a family who own one of the large multiplexes in a neighbouring town. At the Christmas parade, they promoted the Cameo and their refurbishments on a float with a huge banner that read, "We cleaned up the Cameo!" Bizarrely, trailing behind them on foot was old Mr. Florence himself, holding up a sign that read, "And they did a good job!"

The day after I arrived here, we attended a huge "tag sale" of the estate of Mr. Florence and his late mother. Their two houses had been completely cleaned out, their contents put up for sale by an antiques auctioneer we know. She told us it took weeks to clean out the houses, and at least 5 days to clean everything up--in line with the Cameo itself, some items were so dust-covered you couldn't tell what they were, and the water they used to clean them with frequently became as dirty and thick as mud. I went along hoping to see some cinema memorabilia, and especially to see if there might even be some old film equipment going. From what I heard, there may have been, but it was thrown out due to the house clearers not knowing what it was. Two 16mm projectors were left when I got there, but someone had bought them, and I heard that a few items of what seemed to be antique cinema projectors were let go for $5 apiece before I arrived because no one knew what they were.

There were still a number of interesting items when I arrived, however. In addition to a $5 box load of correspondence with senators and now defunct film distributors such as RKO, vintage puzzles, and an antique rubber stamp set, I made a rash (given its weight and the fact that I don't live in this country) decision to buy Mr Florence's trunk pictured above. I've always wanted an old travel trunk. This was one of three at the sale, and this one cost next to nothing because, you see, it is locked, and no one seems to have the key. I'm sure it's empty, and I'm not sure I want ever to open it. I like that Mr. Florence's name is on its side, and I like owning a little piece of the ongoing death of cinema.

Chez Maison

2006-07-25T23:38:00.000+01:00

4 Hour Layover

2006-07-25T23:36:00.000+01:00

RIP Green Boots

2006-07-20T00:08:00.000+01:00

There is, of course, a yet-to-be-fleshed-out reason (see the colour tinting in Blithe Spirit, the ectoplasmic logoing of Ghostbusters, photographs of the number of Green (and Gray) Lady ghosts that permeate our fair British Isles, and Michael Taussig's colour project) that I chose a GREEN representation of Mark E Smith below, but in the process of posting that image I was sadly reminded that my favourie green suede boots suddenly ripped irreparably the other week.

Wonderful and Frightening

2006-07-19T19:49:00.000+01:00

I think few people realise that the title of this blog is inspired by The Fall, perhaps my favourite band of all time (the other half of my blog title--the title in the address--is inspired by one of my favourite texts on surrealism, by Hal Foster; I myself am neither a beauty nor compulsive). Listening to Mark E Smith ranting about computers this evening, I remembered I'd bookmarked this piece of writing that hints at the hauntological possibilities of the Fall; right up my alley, obviously. It happens to be written by one of the contributors to the recent Cultural Fictions conference I attended at Goldsmiths.

At the conference, and while I'm thinking about it (and I really should take notes when I think of these things), I especially enjoyed Mark Broughton's talk on dyschronia in relation to the excellent vintage sci-fi/ghost-fi, made-for-TV flick, The Stone Tape. However, I contend that ghosts are ALWAYS dyscrhonic, not just on the occasions when they're inaccessible through technology and "buried in time," as in The Stone Tape. It's not that technology is used to combat the mysticism surrounding ghosts; in my research on electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and the use of other digital methods of "scientific" ghost hunting, it's the technology that reinforces and redefines the uncanny nature of ghosts--and isn't dyschronia just one more example of the uncanny (being lost in, or TO, time goes beyond other forms of disorientation)? Ghosts are always dyschronic experiences, and even more so when they are stored as endlessly repetitive visual and sonic phenomena in out-of-time-and-space digital archives. Ghosts are irreversibly out of time--through technology they both symbolically and discursively keep repeating (and I don't buy exorcism film-myths and hate how Catholicism has ruined many an otherwise good horror film, but that's a topic for another post). This potential (or inevitable) link of ghosts and technology reinforces Mark B's suggestion (and my own hunch) that ghosts are the ultimate sci-fi figures; they are the ultimate uncanny, as my interminable thesis suggests.

Lost and Found Cat

2006-07-18T11:48:00.000+01:00

Look what spent the night last night!
Our neighbours found this strange little kitty wandering around in panic mode in the middle of the street, and came to us "cat people" for advice. We took it in for the evening (well, into the hallway, along with some food and water and a litter tray and bed) and this morning located its grateful owners who gave me a bottle of wine as thanks.

His name is JJ.

2006-07-17T15:58:00.000+01:00

It's officially tourist season in Brighton, and I can't even work out on the balcony because the square below has been taken over by European teenagers from various language schools who insist on taking pictures of me on their mobile phones. They are like a plague. The beach (above) has been overrun with the same, so I'll stay indoors and wait for everyone to leave in August.

2006-07-13T16:54:00.000+01:00

2006-07-12T16:15:00.000+01:00

Summer has returned, after a couple of cloudy sea-breezy days. I took my work and my bikinied self out onto the balcony this afternoon. At one point, a lovely tan women in a summery dress arrived in the square carrying a picnic blanket, some paper cups, and a tasty-looking cake on a crystal cake stand. How nice, I thought, she's setting up for a little afternoon garden party with friends. Maybe it's someone's birthday, and they'll be surprised by the cake. I watched as the woman spread out the blanket, and then herself, in the dappled shade and lush grass underneath a tree, and wondered when her friends would arrive. Then I realised what she was doing. A huge camera and little tripod had emerged from her bag. And so ensued 15 minutes of angling herself and the cake and cups around on the blanket, and lots of snapping and adjusting of lenses. And then as quick as she came she went: cake, cups, blanket and camera were briskly packed away and she strode past the usual group of drinkers, the older lady who feeds the pigeons and that guy who's always practicing juggling, back to some hot and stuffy office or maybe to her work-from-home studio and a computer full of emails from her advertising clients, one of whom is obviously a seller of cakes, or cake stands, or paper cups, or picnic blankets.

Singapore Fling

2006-07-12T11:11:00.000+01:00

Ryan Chin (whoever you are), look what you've caused.

Wankers

2006-07-11T22:03:00.000+01:00

I had an erotic dream about Pete from Big Brother the other night. He was working or living at this salon that was doing some kind of charity breakfast that I was of course sceptical of. His messy bedroom had a couple of concrete steps that led up to it and he was such a good kisser. I watch too much telly lately.

"Kenneth, What Is the Frequency?"

2006-07-09T12:20:00.000+01:00

I'd forgotten the Donald Barthelme connections to the bizarre incident that happened to newsreader Dan Rather 1980s, when he was attacked by two mysterious men in white coats yelling, "Kenneth, what is the frequency?" You can read about it in this Harpers article.

This unsolved mystery of those men and their origin, identity and destination, and especially that line the repeated over and over, really thrilled and disturbed me. In the same way, I suppose, that "the rhythm" became a concept of mystery and dread for my little brother, owing to the fact that I told him that the Gloria Estefan song "The Rhythm is Gonna Get You" referred to some deadly nighttime presence that haunted little brothers who annoyed their sisters.

Frequency--electricity!--worries and fascinates me in a different way now, and shows up in my thesis alot, which reminds me that I really should post some of it here sometime to ensure even less people stop by this blog regularly.

Donald Barthelme and Ghetto Reference Librarians

2006-07-07T11:47:00.000+01:00

I'm a big fan of the late writer Donald Barthelme, some of whose (very) short stories you can access online thanks to the good work of a radical librarian called Jessamyn.

Speaking, however, of librarians, I clicked on a random blog link today of a woman who works in the reference section of a "ghetto library" in the Bay Area. Maybe I'm out of touch with public libraries, but do workers in the reference section provide a service whereby patrons can ask them random questions about soil, alcoholism, vacation destinations, and even the meanings of dreams and expect to get actual answers (rather than just instructions on how to obtain the answer using the library's resources)? No wonder the blog-writer seems like such a bitch. Her blog describes being trapped in a cubicle smothered by co-workers she hates as drunks and weirdos approach her with impossibly weird and random questions that she must provide answers to, while worrying about other issues such as the lethargy of housekeeping services when it comes to cleaning up after patrons' incontinent guide dogs.

I particularly like her entry about a woman who regularly calls up asking the reference librarians to interpret her dreams for her--which they obediently do, using a whole little section of dream interpretation books they've set up just for her. My whole point being that the blog entry has a Barthelme-esque tone to it, while the scenario itself is reminiscent of Bunuel's absurd film scenarios, or maybe Hans Richter's Dreams That Money Can Buy. I'm just saying I think there could be a surrealist film in there somewhere.

Jerry Eleison

2006-07-06T14:53:00.000+01:00

Went to see Jerry Springer the Opera the other night cause it's not selling well at the Dome so M had some free tix. I was excited to see some protesters outside holding placards urging us not to support the show (and according to this this, some of them may have even been fasting in anticipation! Wow, and all I did was change out of my flip flops into some sensible shoes in case the theatre was cold.). When we went in, the protesters handed us some brochures spelling out their quibbles, which were fair enough given these folks have probably not been burdened by so much of the annoying high theatre/performance art that I have, and are therefore unable to interpret the show as the slightly unsuccesful postmodern dig at opaquely grandiose and absurdist opera themes that I think it's, in part, meant to be. Which was what was kind of disappointing about it. When I was in high school, back when the Springer show was a late night treat focusing less on freaks and more on the freakish situations arising out of inequalities in class, race and gender exacerbated by a mass-media saturated US (and of course, by the show itself) I loved watching it as I love playing GTA: San Andreas now. It's a sort of self-critical anthropology served up on a plate. But there's no critique of media in Jerry Springer the Opera, no political messages. In that respect, it's simply pretty tame, West End humour. I liked the chorus line of many Jerrys at the end, though. Tap dancing chorus lines are great, so I don't know where these crazy Christians get off saying there's nothing uplifting here.

Oh, and the photo is not of a Jerry Springer the Opera protester, but rather of a man who was demonstrating with his family outside of a SuperWalMart in Arkansas. My dad had a new camera and decided to make them his first subjects and stopped and chatted. Nice folks, he said. I love how each state on his sign has a different sin attached to it. I think it's funny that Kansas's sin is "Effeminate." Hmmm.

World Cup Fever Breaking

2006-06-30T23:40:00.000+01:00

M and I have exhausted our collective barracking possibities for this World Cup, save our adpoted home of England. Ok, so the US exhausted its own possibilities for victory while Australia was heartbreakingly robbed. So gooooooo England.

Really, I'm trying to muster enthusiasm, but I've still got an image of the mass of little urinating willies of the red-shirted drunks who spilled out of the pubs and into the sqaure below our house after the England game a couple of weeks ago. Their fervent bleating of "World in Motion" (my fave World Cup song, actually) meant more urine landed on their trousers than on the shrubs, and also that the New Order kick I'd been on was effectively ended. But yeah, I'll be in front of the telly come 1600 tomorrow.

2006-06-29T19:56:00.000+01:00

Some things may stick with me forever. Not just the obviously memorable tragic-farcical things that hit us in the face last week (of which there were many, but the empty horse-drawn hearse and funeral procession that blocked our path outside the station for the London hospital being the most obvious, save the image on the screen we would see an hour or so later). It’s other things, irrelevant little scenes, colours, overheard bits of conversations, phrases printed on wall signs, that seem to have imprinted permanently on my mind. On the way out of the hospital: in the elevator, a man whose accent sounded Trinidadian and his two little boys, one sobbing into his dad’s shoulder. “He’s afraid of elevators,” the man smilingly explained to us. Somehow we managed to laugh and smile back. “It’s ok, we reach, we reach,” said the man to the little boy when the doors opened onto the main lobby. A few minutes later in the park next door: no idea what I said into the phone to my parents, but what sticks in my mind are the purple pansies and the pink and orange lilies and the little rose bushes, and the daytime drinkers’ cans of cider and lager glinting metallic blue and gold in the afternoon sun, and the brown squirrel that ran in slow motion towards me, stopping at my feet to beg for food. Then later, specific tastes: champagne in a waterbottle; a mojito without mint. The image from that Clive Barker book that made us laugh at our realisation of its perverse inappropriateness as a comforting mechanism for dealing with this. The next day back in Brighton: my bare tan legs and mauve toenails on the white hospital bedspread. Healthy-looking. Absinth-green odourless nail polish remover and one cotton ball to take away the mauve from my fingertips that would apparently interfere with the monitoring equipment if left in place. The “quick” crossword we started while we waited: eight-letter word for Freud’s term for the conscious mind; four-letter word for senile, 3rd letter is “R;” nine-letter word for “compelling,” also beginning with “C.” Did it call for a synonym or for some well-known example of something compelling, we wondered. Ken Loach’s Cannes winner: a recommendation from one of the anaesthesists upstairs who knows anthropologists study people and can be political and thinks it’s cool. His assistant is left-handed like me; we’re becoming more common in the OR apparently (too late to ask if as patients or workers). A green plastic thing being taken from my mouth as I woke from an instantly forgotten nightmare set in dark Kemptown alleyways. Downstairs again, and with the grogginess came clarity: the answer was of course “superego.” I always think better under the influence of something. We let the rest go; left the newspaper behind on the floor.

A Beginning and an Ending

2006-06-28T19:10:00.000+01:00

I have a habit of taking self-portraits at or near the begnnings and endings of things.

These are both happy photos, regardless of what's come in-between.

I hope you can tell.

More Peel for Your Pleasure

2006-06-05T15:47:00.000+01:00

That Radio 1 Peel site I linked below has links to other great Peel sites, including one containing the John Peel Sweet Eating Game and a page of priceless quotes from the man himself, containing the following gem:

"Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, 'Listen, mate, *life* has surface noise.'"

2006-06-05T10:24:00.000+01:00

I miss John Peel John Peel a great deal, once or twice a week of late. Guess I could use some distracting. Late Junction is ok, especially for drifting between sleep and whatever I'm reading, but those regular re-appearances of Tom Waits and new age-y soundtrack stuff from Peter Gabriel: it's hardly stuff you haven't heard before, or want to be hearing more than once.

A breezy warmish day here in Brighton, and outside yellow-pink blossoms and red and white England football flags are blowing about in the breeze, and flies are breezing in and out of the house, with Piper whirling around after them.

It's been just over 9 months since the hurricane hit the Gulf coast of the US, obliterating a lot of people and things and places from my childhood memories and my adulthood fantasies about the future, and now it's hurricane season again. Nine months is both a long and short time to live with something that's mostly in my in mind as memory and fantasy but, through my own persistent planning and "research" since then, feels as heartbreakingly real as if it were a living breathing dying daily presence.

"Is it right to break the heart of one that adores you?"

2006-05-28T22:28:00.000+01:00

So read D.B.C. Pierre at his talk on Friday evening, from a piece of fan mail from a besotted Bengali man. Or something like that.

Er, and then there's this.

2006-05-23T15:41:00.000+01:00

http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialcare/news/0,,1781360,00.html

Oh Shahbaz.

I like BB this year.

2006-05-23T15:20:00.000+01:00

That footballer's wife wannabe girl is a real cutie and speaks like a cross between my friend Jemma and Michael "Phantom of the Opera" Crawford in Some Mother's Do 'Ave 'Em.

And what's not to like about well-endowed Tourette's sufferers such as Brighton's own Pete?

And last night after the whole house spurned the annoying Shahzan (the "Pakie Pouf"), he snuck into the kitchen while everyone slept and stole all the food, muttering typical villain threats for the cameras: "I'll make them fucking talk to me. Let's see how they think now. Oh, the satisfaction!" Straight panto.

Speaking of Huevos

2006-05-22T20:11:00.000+01:00

Rancheros deluxe.

Eggman

2006-05-22T20:04:00.000+01:00

Though I'm eating mine scrambled in the microwave these days.

Brighton Festival Rundown

2006-05-18T15:19:00.000+01:00

If I were a more diligent and anal person, I would have written a review for each of the Brighton Festival events that, together, have kept me out nearly most nights over the last two weeks. Instead, I'll just list the things I can remember seeing, and you can ask me if you want a review or recommendation. Seth, does this count as a step in the right direction towards anti-ephemerism? Probably not.

*Live Soundtrack to Film: local bands play soundtracks to locally-themed films by local filmmakers
*Various open houses: snoopers' paradise
*Lost and Found Orchestra: Stomp boys' 2nd
*Papa Mas: carnival and community groups
*Paradise Lost: Milton schmilton
*Ten Thousand Several Doors: Duchess of Malfi and the mafia. Patron Steven Berkhoff.
*Children's Parade: theme=food, plus "City By the Sea" beach sing-along
*La Clique: Spiegeltent cabaret of strip-magic, acrobatics, music, etc
*The Nose: Shostakovich opera featuring giant renegade nose
*Big Iron: cowboy tales at the Prince Albert "saloon"
*Group F-The Light Players: fireworks and French weirdness in Preston Park. Thank you, VIP list.
*Streets of Brighton: where these novelties were to be seen:

Still to do and see:

*Dr John: tonight
*Howe Gelb and the Handsome Family
*The Haunt: MP3-guided performance walk
*Caligraphy Double: my former student's exhibition of caligraphy art
*SpyMonkey-Cooped: acclaimed theatre
*DBC Pierre: the author
*Park Play (at St. Ann's Wells gardens)
*No Obvious Trauma: surreality at a mental institution?
*Red Sea Social Club at the Spiegeltent
*Walk the Line Americana Music Fest
*Allsorts Open House: mental health art
*Origami Workshop at Embassy Court
*Haunted Hove Walk
*An Evening With Nightingales: nature walk

David Bowie...

2006-05-18T15:13:00.000+01:00

... is very disappointed in you.

Nag Nag Nag

2006-05-09T12:27:00.000+01:00

Oysters=Poison; Taussig Talk

2006-05-03T09:44:00.000+01:00

I'd been all geared up to write a restaurant review or two, since we had couple of interesting meals out recently, one at Casalingo in Preston Street and the other at the newly opened Okini in East Street. Alas, I got food food poisoning at the latter. It was my own fault. I ordered oysters, a lovely dish of them stir-fried "Malaysian" style with bacon. I was aware that oysters and me don't always agree, but I thought this was more to do with uncooked oysters, as I seem to be ok with deep fried ones when I'm home in the US South. Suffice to say, this isn't the case, and I've obviously got some kind of allergy to them. I was violently ill on Monday night; I did wonder if I might possibly be dying, feeling as did that someone had stuck a knife in my guts, severing most of my nerves, but also splitting important internal tubing into little pieces so that lethal toxins were set free into the rest of my body, leaving my in a state of shivering near-paralysis. But it passed. Given my still-slightly-queaesy state, though, the food reviews will have to wait.

I am off to London today for a talk by Michael Taussig. He's desribed it as follows:

"I want to give a 'color-reading' of Malinowski's Argonauts of the Western Pacific, understanding color as a living force taking you into the object of study. This is part of a book I am working on called 'What is the Color of the Sacred?' The title comes from surrealist-ethnographer Michel Leiris and my jumping off point come from Goethe's 1810 book on color where he states that people of refinement are averse to vivid colors whereas 'man in astate of nature,' kids, the women of southern Italy, love them. Seeing modern world history as the struggle between chromophobes and chromophilliacs, I side with Walter Benjamin, William Burroughs, and Marcel Proust is seeing color as something alive, like an animal, akin to what I call 'magical polymorphous substance.'"

Lost and Found

2006-04-27T10:18:00.000+01:00

It's nearly Festival time here in Brighton. Which, if it's like last year, means that M., who is employed by said Festival, will keep odd hours and I'll be out many eves seeing shows--which can't be good for the thesis-writing, but does tend to make me appreciate Brighton after a long winter of early sunsets and sour people (and god knows I'm one of them sometimes) in the streets.

One of M.'s main responsibilities this year has been "production co-ordination" (co-ordinating production?) for the Lost and Found Orchestra, the new show by the producers of world-famous Stomp. Lost and Found will be similar to Stomp, but in addition to percussive instruments made from industrial items, there will be a whole orchestra of "found" materials transformed into things that make music. And there's an acrobat. For a preview, check out the Brighton Festival Music Maker, where you can mix your own music using sounds from the show.

In other "news," it's a sunny warm day here, which has brought out another sign of Spring: the drunks have returned to the square outside our flat, along with daffodils and seagulls picking around at grass shavings for their nests. Since about 8:30 this morning they've been sitting around nursing tall cans of lager. A couple of guys are now playing football, cans still in hand. I don't mind them (except for this one girl with boofy hair who is so damn LOUD when she combines her lager with a shot of heroin around the corner), but I suspect the police will be here any minute to usher them on. Our neighbours don't like DOGS in the square, so you can imagine their reaction to lower class humans.

Times Square Traces

2006-04-25T16:51:00.000+01:00

I lived in New York City around the time Giuliani's Disneyfication of Times Square was getting into full swing. At that time, however, there still existed a number of the older peep show venues, labrynthine tunnels of neon and mirrors and strange circus deocroations snaking up and down and through buildings in and around 42nd Street. M. is a connosieur of these, and clued me in to some of his Midtown faves, which we last explored in 2001.

On our recent visit, we were excited to see that the old PlayPen peep show at least still has its marquis. Inside we found a small shop selling porn, with a depressing-looking little peep show downstairs. A few doors down we found the marquis for Show World, the largest and most mysterious of the old Times Square adult entertainment establishments; I'd read that it shut down for good in 2002. The former Romanesque statues and mannequins and carousel horses that used to adorn the place are nowhere to be seen now. It appears to simply be an average sex shop running out of the ground floor--seedy in a normal, depressing way. In 2001, when it still occupied at least 3 or 4 storeys, M. wandered around its various levels, taking video of its already partially-empty corridors and rooms, because we knew even then that it was dying.

Adult entertainment centres are not the only classic-Times-Square casualites. The old arcades, cavernous spaces emanating retro-futuristic sounds and light, have disappared as well. My favorite, a massive 4 story complex in 42nd Street, now appears to be some kind of slick shopping centre or hotel. Another fave (in 46th or 47th?), that still incorporates an old Laser Tag facility (also eerily painted in faded glow-in-the dark-space scene decor) lives on, though most of its vintage games, especially those emitting the weird noises that so mystified me, are gone. When we visited, the remaining couple of floors that were still open were packed out with kids and we could barely get around. Which is a good thing, in that kids are still going to arcades, but it's not going to bring back the strange old machines and atmosphere.

Though I enjoyed drinking gourmet beers and playing vintage arcade games for a quarter at Barcade in Williamsburg, it can never match the surreal and slightly dodgy experience of wandering through the seedy streets of Midtown on a quiet and rainy weeknight and being lured into a dark arcade by the otherworldly synthetic bleeps and vibrations of a strange game. And the people who used to inhabit the shadows of these places--many were just working class teens from the Bronx having a day in the City, but others were some pretty strange characters lurking in the shadow and light of the arcade game screens. Where are those guys now?

Ghostbusters! (Two.)

2006-04-22T00:25:00.000+01:00

Too much wine too quickly tonight, so I'm chilling out doing some "fieldwork" by watching Ghostbusters 2 on E4. At the moment, an Upper West Side-looking extra has just stepped out of a theatre wearing a mink stole and some pastel pink Dyeables (like you might have worn to your prom). She's stepped into some emotionally-susceptible hot pink ectoplasm and the taxidermied mink head of her stole has come alive and is hissing and attacking her face. The green snot-like ectoplasm of the original has evolved, you see. Like the pseudo-scientific ghosthunting I write about in my thesis: "psychical research has evolved," says the UK ghost club sponsered by Living TV here in the UK.

I need to watch this film more closely. Unlike the first Ghostbusters, which was full of mostly funny character ghosts, Ghostbusters 2 is chock full of the past itself coming back to haunt the present. A train that crashed around the turn of the last century comes hurtling through a forgotten underground track. The Titanic finally docks at a city port, allowing its long-dead passengers to file into the city (and as Jeffery Sconce reminds us, the Titanic disaster occurred around the same time as supernatural-seeming devices like radios and telegraphs, were coming to the fore, and inspired a spate of tales of dead victims communicating from the dead through these "new media"). The Statue of Liberty comes to life and walks from Ellis Island across the water to the promised land of Manhattan.

And there's this constant underlying theme of how shit the city is. Bill Murray's character reiterates it over and over. At one point he questions why any ghost would voluntarily choose to haunt such a crap place. This is obviously pre-Disney-happy-Giuliani NYC. I think there are connections to be made between this self-deprecating c.1980s hatred of this most "American" of places, the undigested events of 2001, and the hyper-sanitised version of the city I encounted last week. Can you imagine a Ghostbusters 3 in which the Twin Towers are resurrected via hot pink ectoplasm and victims of 9/11 are released into the city, in need of a good "busting" by the boys?

I've just viewed a cute scene in which Rick Moranis is re-united with troublesome ghost Slimer, who's manning a hot dog stand. "Well, Ok, but I didn't know you were licensed..." says Rick. Sequels themselves are another version of repetition and regurgitation...

Photo is of me re-enacting the scene from Ghostbusters 1 in which Bill Murray happily spins around the fountain outside of Lincoln Center, where Dana (aka Sigourney Weaver) has orchestra rehearsal.

New York Post

2006-04-20T23:28:00.000+01:00

Sadly not posting from NYC, but from back home in Brighton, where I am eating the remains of my last black and white cookie for awhile. I only managed to eat 2 the whole time, not the one-a-day I'd strived for.

On the cab ride in from JFK, M. and I talked about how instantly at home we feel anywhere in the US. We love parts of the UK, and are probably more "OF" the UK (after living here more than 7 years) than we give ourselves credit for, but there's something familiar about the US that puts us both at ease.

We stayed at The Hudson, a giant "boutique" hotel near Columbus Circle. It's a lovely-looking place: a neon-coloured escalator leads to the ivy-covered sky-lit lobby, and the hotel bar has neat floor lighting and transparent furniture (and lovely cocktails), and a nice outside area. The problem with it is how try-hard all the guests seem to be! Loads of hipster PLUs (People Like Us, as M. aptly named them) were wandering around trying to too look low-key-trendy in their American Apparel and Converse, and we don't need that shit. We were also surprised that extras like Internet access and stuff wasn't free, as they might be at other hotels with slick ambitions. I guess that's what the promotional website meant by "shabby chic." But it suited our needs fine, especially since we could walk to the Park easily.

Our first night we headed out to Williamsburg where we met our friend Jonathan for a "media cabaret" event at this place called Monkeytown. However, first we visited Barcade, which is just what it sounds like. I was so jet-lagged there was no way I even got close to beating my own record at my fave game Centipede, but M. did pretty well at the old Star Wars game (pictured).
Monkeytown itself was lovely. Nice people and drinks, and the back-room space of the cinema/performance area was lovely: a white square room with screens and low white couches on each of the four walls. I wish I could screen something there! But the show itself...not so hot. The idea is that people do various acts--comedy, music, etc--while thematically appropriate films are screened on the walls around the room. I think all three of us were pretty much wishing the "performers"--who included a couple of just-post-college girls who watch way too much SNL bouncing around telling raunchy jokes--would leave and let us get on with watching the films. Most of the audience seemed to be friends of the performers, so at least everyone else enjoyed it. And there's something sort of nice about knowing that you can put on some shit, and you're going to have some trendy W'burg audience come and enjoy it--even if they're just the people with whom you share your loft in Lorimer Street.

Friday was shopping-day. We decided to go Bendix Diner to start the day like we used to lots of weekends. We took a cab downtown to save time, and then spent the next hour wandering 1st and 3rd (we knew it was on one or the other) looking for it. But it is no more, as we found out later. So we headed into one of the many little tacoria's that have sprung up around the area and had the best huevos rancheros ever, made with a fab black bean sauce. We then went to the expanded Kim's in St. Marks' Place and bought dozens of DVDs, then to a bookstore where we bought too many movie-trade mags, and a few books (though every bookstore I visited was lacking in Southern lit--it was like being in the UK where asking for Walker Percy gets you a blank stare). We wandered around the shops of SoHo then down to Chinatown, and I stocked up on writing accessories at Pearl River. We somehow ended up in the after-work crowd at Century 21 downtown. Not a good place to be, though M. scored some nice designer-y shirts and I got some short-shorts. We had a dinner reservation at OysterBar in Grand Central, where we dined years ago just after I found out about scoring an Overseas Research Award that would eventually cut short my NY life and bring me back to the UK. Then we headed to to see this film CSA, a moc-doc about what might have happened had the South won the Civil War, because we thought a movie would be a good way to round out the night. Mistake: I squirmed at its badness, then promptly fell asleep. Review of this terribly onerous (and just plain historically incorrect) film to follow in another post!

Saturday we had a nice overpriced breakfast at the hotel and wandered over to MOMA where we couldn't be bothered to wait in the long queue. It was too nice a day for being indoors anyway. So we strolled over to the Upper East Side to check out my old workplace, Memorial Sloane Kettering Cancer Center. It was weird to see it again, and not much has changed (though I hear women workers have to wear pantyhose with skirts now. Ugh.). Then it was on to Central Park, where a huge Easter fair was happening.

Tiring of kids and Peeps, we then did MORE shopping and I got a lovely seersucker jacket that I will undoubtedly stain before it's even warm enough to wear it in the UK. Then it was out to Queens to see Jonathan and his wife Monica's new place. For dinner, we all headed back into town to go the The Cajun, one of the last bastions of old school jazz in the city. We had some passable southern food (and I had a lovely martini made with jalapenos) and listened to the Red Onion Jazz Band, comprised of men in their 70s, one younger Hasidic Jewish guy, and an elderly female singer whose beautiful voice sounded like it was being projected from the 1920s. Lovely to hear some Dixie jazz! We decided to go over to the Meatpacking District for a final drink, and I was hoping my old fave, The Village Idiot (a sort of honkey tonk institution with $1 PBR), would still be there. No such luck. And what a shock--how could something so right have suddenly gone so wrong? The Meatpacking District is no longer comprised of trucker bars and gay s&m basement clubs sprinkled among meat warehouses. What we saw was pseudo-slick bars filled with preppy young men in Polo shirts, and ditzy, coiffed girls in J. Crew kitten heels clacking along the pretty old brick streets. We shuddered collectively and quickly passed through, and Monica told me that actually drinking PBR is a real trendy thing in New York these days anyway; I noticed later it's on tap at the Knitting Factory. Geez. We went to this Belgian bar we used to like instead where the waitress ALMOST dropped a beer on my new seersucker jacket. But not quite.
Sunday we woke up early and walked further uptown to brunch at @SQC, where I couldn't get a bloody mary from their amazingly extensive bloody mary menu because they don't serve them before noon! And I couldn't get a virgin mary because they couldn't get their drinks freezer unlocked. Nice food, though, and the place was packed when we left. It was a beautiful day, so we bought the paper and headed over to the park, where we saw robbins and starlings and a thrush, the guy who goes everywhere with his lovebirds, a few of the usual rollerskaters, and lots of people in absurdly huge Easter bonnets heading to the bonnet contest at Tavern on the Green.

After getting blissfully sunburned, it was time for the highlight our trip: Moscow Cats Theatre! The show is now a proper Broadway show, having moved to 44th St due thanks to its popularity. But it shares a space with some kind of evangelical church, and the theatre itself is quite small, with a stage decked in this lovely rainbow lame' curtain, so there's something a little seamy and old-school Times Square about it. The show itself--what can I say? It's this Russian clown and his many cats who run across the stage at odd intervals, do backbends on their front paws in the clown's palm, push baby buggies across the stage, and shimmy their way across broom handles using only their front legs. It's hilarious and weird. Highly recommended.

Last thing we did was dinner at the lovely Empire Diner in Chelsea,
where I finally got my bloody mary
and some mean homemade pig-in-a-blankets!

Happy Birthday, Piper!

2006-04-09T09:02:00.000+01:00

Piper Jones the cat is 1 year old today! Welcome to womanhood, Piper.

I've been toying around with ideas about what to get her. She's a picky eater, and has most other things her heart desires. Except for one of these Japanese costumes for cats who like to play dress up:

Oh look, it's the Easter bunny!

This is...well, it's supposed to be an elephant.

This one's reminiscent of that film Don't Look Now! Yikes.

And who's the handsome fellow, then?

Pretty in pink!

Piper is not amused. Happy birthday, baby!

"Foreign types with the hookah pipes say..."

2006-04-07T19:00:00.000+01:00

Way-oh way-oh, my M. is in Cai-ro. For the weekend, meeting his mum who's holidaying there.

So while he's away, I thought I'd share this email he sent me recently:

"Subject: Blogs - My Roseanne Crush Realised!
Hey, this new-fangled blog thingy that all you youngsters are into is good - I was just exploring blogspot that you're now part of and found a blog for my No. 2 teenage crush - Lecy Goranson - the first Becky from Roseanne. She's now an attractive 31 year old living as a middling actor in Brooklyn. You can see it here: http://aliciagoranson.blogspot.com. She could be your sister. Which is maybe why I liked her - my type! Or maybe that's why I liked you when we met?!"

He was very excited. As are a lot of people, judging by the comments she gets on her blog. We look nothing alike, by the way.

Speaking of Brooklyn, we're off to NYC over Easter. Look us up at the Hudson if you're around and want to borrow our room key to blag your way onto (into?) the rooftop bar (sorry, the "Sky Terrace").

PS. A surprise-prize to the first person who guesses M's No. 1 teenage crush! The title of this post is a clue.

Dyscalculia?

2006-04-06T17:14:00.000+01:00

I KNEW I was math(s)-dyslexic! I’ve said it for years.

I’m okay at doing mathematical calculations in an academic context—I made it to calculus-level in high school and did well. My math score on the ACT brought down my otherwise high scores in other subjects, but I did fine in and enjoyed math-based physics courses at university. As someone who now does a bit of film editing, I’m good at working with time codes and related numerical concepts. But I’m terrible with maths and numbers in social situations, especially if there’s pressure to perform well.

Example: the other day I was making a dinner reservation over the phone and I had to give M’s mobile number. Which I know by heart; I can easily recite it because there’s a certain rhythm I’ve ascribed to its playback in my head. Writing it down is another matter. I usually get confused and have to give up and copy it from my own mobile directory. Anyway, I was reciting this number over the phone when the woman on the other end told me to hang on for a sec after I’d said only the first few digits or so. When she came back to the phone she tried to start me in the middle of the phone number but I couldn’t do it. I tried to start over from the beginning, but then I got too flustered. Were there two “1”s? Were there 3 “0”s? I couldn’t do it. I had to tell her numbers aren’t my forte and hand the phone over to M. It was sort of funny at the time, but this sort of thing happens to me all the time.

So today I came across this list of symptoms for the learning disability “dyscalculia”—like dyslexia but with numbers. Ignoring the fact that there are numerous typos and misspellings in the list, some of these really hit home in a scary way:

“May have fear of money and cash transactions…”
I hate the moment in shops and restaurants when it’s time to pay for something and I’ve got a lot of change instead of notes. I get flustered; I break out in a cold sweat; I drop the money on the floor; I want to run home, leaving my groceries behind. This may be why I usually try to pay with large notes, and why we’ve amassed what looks to be about £200 in change at our house (last I counted—and I LIKE counting; I’m really NOT bad at maths in the right circumstances--it was at £75).

“May be unable to mentally figure change due back, the amounts to pay for tips, taxes, etc…”
And don’t even try to get me to calculate a tip; especially when the rules are so ambiguous in the UK anyway. For anything under £40 I’d rather just leave an extra £5 and not suffer the agony of trying to calculate on the spot; as a former suffering waitress, I have no problem with that. I love going to bars in the US because the $1-per-drink tip rule is the one thing I can get right and that allows me to pretend I’m normal. And taxes? Don't make me laugh. Have never filed them.

“Fails to see the big financial picture…”
Hmm, let’s not get into my student loan debt here. Because I honestly couldn’t tell you how much I owe. Well, I could, but only because M. made me compile a list of all my loans recently so that we can keep track of it. It had never really occurred to me that I owed so much. Or that I have to pay it back. With something called “interest.” Why did I never think about it?

“Poor with money and credit. Cannot do financial planning or budgeting…”
See above; M. also helped me make a list of what I spend and what I make and what I owe to help me learn to budget. I've always avoided having credit cards because they seem too complicated. I do have a few now--subsidiary cards of M. and my parents. But I rarely use them because they scare me. I stick to my debit card and non-coin cash and am usually fine. Money in, money out, change back from bills for the ever growing coin pile: good enough.

“Gets lost or disoriented easily. May have a poor sense of direction, loose [sic] things often, and seem absent minded…”
One time I spent a whole hour searching for a friend’s house I'd never visited; I was staying there while he was out of town. His directions were good and detailed. But I went in circles over and over again, and then I found a map but apparently read it backwards and went around in circles in the opposite direction. A policmeman came and helped me; I was flustered because it was getting late and I had started crying and it occurred to me that I had a serious mental disability. It turned out that at no time was I more than block away from my destination. And don’t get M. started on my inablilty to navigate when he’s driving. That said, once I know a place, I never get lost. And I can usually find places just by "feel" (it's not like I get lost in airports or shopping malls or while running on the seafront)--I just can't make sense of directions and maps somtimes. Oh, and I used to lose things all the time (I’m still sad over that calculator watch I drunkenly lost in the Oxford Students' Union in '97!), but I trained myself not to when I started wearing an engagement ring. And of course I’m absent-minded. I’ve always been a daydreamer, and now I’m supposedly an academic. What do you want?

“Difficulty keeping score during games, or difficulty remembering how to keep score in games, like bowling, etc. Often looses [sic] track of whose turn it is during games, like cards and board games…”
Most people know I HATE card games because it takes me ages to comprehend them, and who's turn it is, and I get flustered. But damn if I don’t love some Yahtzee, and that’s based on numbers. And I never forget whose turn it is in games where the order of play is sequentially determined by where you're sitting, especially if there’s a drinking component to the game.

And as for some of the other listed symptoms, I don’t mix up people’s names unless they’re boring people, and I’m great with remembering dates and times of something interesting that happened/is going to happen, and I'm able to “visualize” things far more than is probably healthy.

But I mix up right and left. All the time. That’s not on the list; it just occurred to me that it feels related somehow. And I’m terribly shy when it comes to speaking in public spontaneously—it’s as bad as being asked to perform math on demand; I want to run away. I've always felt there was a common thread between all these idiosyncracies, such as my left-handedness. Probably there is none.

By the way, the site I got my list of dyscalculia symptoms from is charging $500 for an online diagnostic test. No wonder "dyscalculiacs" have a "fear of money and cash transactions" if that's what it takes to get diagnosed!

Residue Redux?

2006-04-04T12:45:00.000+01:00

Back in 2000, I made a 17-minute film called Residue as part of my MA in visual anthropology. It was awarded distinction, I moved back home to the Southern US and then to NYC and then back to the UK, and I never got round to doing anything with it.

My film basically dealt with the strange world of the Deep South and fundamentalist Christianity there. There are interviews with local characters and friends who tell stories about bizarre high school murders and their connection to religion.

There are slowed-down drive-by shots of suburban houses and churches, scenes of Sunday services, and a soundtrack of creepy songs about the devil, courtesy of Daniel Johnston.

Last night I finally watched the BBC-commissioned film, Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus. Which was basically about the strange world of the Deep South and fundamentalist Christianity there. There are interviews with local characters and friends of Jim White, the narrator, who tell stories about bizarre accidents and their connection with religion.

There are slowed-down drive-by shots of trailer homes and churches, scenes of Sunday services, and a massive soundtrack (via live performances) of creepy songs about religion courtesy of the Handsome Family, Johnny Dowd, 16 Horsepower, and others. Oh, and Harry Crews drops in to tell stories from time to time.

Plagiarism on a bigger budget, obviously!

It's lovely film, no doubt about it. There are beautiful opening shots of swamp roads and Jim White talks about hating the South as a teenager but then later being in foreign places and catching a passing scent of his old home on the wind, and eventually being drawn to return there. He talks about how necessary it was to leave the South to appreciate it and do something with it (which resonates with my own experience).

But despite the pretty cinematography, the great musical performances, and the nicely disjointed nature of the film, there's something troubling about it, something that makes me question my own strategies and intentions regarding my filmic aspirations down yonder.

There’s a scene where White (and presumably the invisible film crew) are driving around some trailer park, and he says to the camera, “You could go into any of these trailers and hear the saddest or the funniest story you ever did hear. Hmm. There is a part of me that, as an insider,” really believes that. I know my friends and relatives in the South well.

There is another part of me that immediately registers this kind of sensationalist talk as tourist brochure schlock that feeds the ridiculous notions about the South that most Brits have. M. said, though, "Imagine seeing this film as a music-obsessed 15-year-old British kid. It'd be magic and you'd want to know more."

Maybe so. And you know me. I'm all for magic and festishism, even in anthropology and tourism. But it makes me wonder what side of the fence I'm on with my own upcoming film plans. Who am I making stuff for, given my insider/outsider status, and the fact that it took living in the UK for years to draw my interest back there?

[All images from Residue by yours truly, 2000]

Archive Fever

2006-04-03T16:23:00.000+01:00

Hot on the heels of completing a rough draft of my thesis chapter dealing with photographic archives (you know, Derrida, replication, false memories), I’ve been delving into the The National Archives online. I love the look of the poster to the right, on which the BBC did a little story last week.

Apparently teenage girls would bunk off school and hang out with American GIs, who offered them money and entertainment and lots of sex during the “general excitement and unsettled conditions” of wartime London.

According to the BBC article, a letter was sent by the Home Office to the police stating that "these American soldiers passed the girls on to their friends and in a very short time, any one girl could be responsible for infecting a considerable number of people."

So obviously the soldiers had nothing whatsoever to do with the spread of VD--it was the "feckless" schoolgirls! A total of 37 where arrested for it over a 12 month period.

Ah, love and war…

The National Archives also has selection of their public information films available for viewing online.

I especially like Children and Disused Fridges from 1971. Though Rabies Advice is a bizarre one too, given the UK has been rabies-free for years and years. Oh wait, that's probably a direct result of this film!

Meteorology

2006-03-30T10:59:00.000+01:00

No sun for two days, though the clouds broke mometarily yesterday morning so I was able to observe the total solar eclipse. About 10% of the sun appeared covered from the UK.

It's spring, daffodils are blooming and the black birds and gulls are flitting around everywhere getting ready for nests and babies, but it's a dark day, my nose is cold, and there's a misty wind blowing in off the sea.

"A brand new life around the bend..."

2006-03-29T18:25:00.000+01:00

A few years ago, my brother Chris and I developed an unnatural obsession with Who’s the Boss. It could have been because we were both stuck in Dragnolia for the summer, with nothing to do late at night except nostalgically absorb the 1980's colours and textures of Angela's fashions and makeup and the obvious sexual tension between Judith Light and Tony Danza that TBS broadcast in back-to-back episodes. In any case, our obsession with the show led Chris to the eerie world of “fan art.” To the left is one of our favourite specimens--a real gem depicting Tony and Angela--that we found on a Who’s the Boss “resource” site.

You can find more WTB fan art here.

We never got round to printing out copies to iron on to t-shirts.
If you do, send me one.

21/3/06

2006-03-28T12:16:00.000+01:00

I'm now the same age Hank Williams was when he died.

Here’s what happened on my birthday a week ago today. We had cake and mimosas and presents, and then we drove through the countryside up to Oxfordshire to a secret location. Which turned out to be a stables where we had a riding lesson and then an exhilarating trek on Cloud and Jester in the freezing cold wind. Incidentally, our riding instructor Caroline turned out to be good friends with Harold from Neighbours!

We then went to a wildlife park, which was lovely in being eerily empty (except for a mysterious black labrador who seemed to be tied up outside of each indoor attraction we visited). We saw strange gigantic snakes, a huge ant metropolis, two newly immigrated sloths, some emus, some tropical birds with blue mohawks, a tiny baby chimp, and, the best part of all, a colony of fruit bats. The bats display was brilliant: their large space was lit with infrared light, so you could watch them flitting around, soaring around and diving down for food, then coming in to land upside down against the window pane and on branches—and somewhat creepily in a large writhing ball of about 50 of the little things hanging from one of the branches. They looked like little winged squirrels. Amazing.

After that it was off to another secret surprise location, which turned out to be the Crazy Bear Hotel, a strange and wonderful place in the middle of nowhere that we’ve been hoping to visit for some time. Reception is in an old double decker bus nestled in some palm trees. We were upgraded to the Lynchian “Jet Black Suite,” where champagne was waiting. Along with a strange Jacuzzi bath complete with changing coloured lights right in the middle of the bed—it was like a bath of homemade Easter egg dye, minus the smell of vinegar. And the water came from the ceiling, which was padded in white silk.

More presents, then a Thai dinner at the oddly-decorated (I can find no fault with the use of mannequins, or their heads, ever) hotel restaurant, then Cointreau (aka orange-medicine G&T) in large funny glasses and dancing to the Fall DVD (look how young Mark E. looks against that textured wallpaper!) that was one of my gifts.

Next day was room service breakfast and a drive back south cause the amazing Mr. M., who was responsible for all this, had to work and I had to present a paper.

pop quiz=a test

2006-03-24T22:44:00.000Z

Testing one two three

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