Michael Jackson

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Sunlight on marker on cardboard, 2012. One day I'll have the means to scan it.

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"She will climb a ladder to the roof of her house to watch the sky and hold a bone to the sun."

There seems to be a whole industry of children's books about Georgia O'Keeffe here in New Mexico. That's my favorite line from one of them.

Sun/shadow today:


Ceiling apparition:

Forever 24

i. Strange Cases

Genitals Of Lunacy

The cocks, lunatic as advertised, had also, as one might expect in a porn whose title derived from a Nico song, something quite sad in their aspect.

The Lincolns

Case study: A man with 500 personalities, each of them Abraham Lincoln at different points along the sexuality spectrum, from totally straight to totally gay, and y-axis variations thereof.

SSI Sex Scene Investigation

A TV procedural that opens each week with the aftermath of a bizarre sex scene. Investigators have to reconstruct the peculiar set of sexual proclivities that led to such a scene.

Top Of The City

Careening from the sickbed toward a urinal at the top of New York City. There's an open window next to you as you piss and the black-and-white hatch mark city yawns below, a situation that always makes you want to jump down into the inky, rainy depths of the page.


ii. The Strange Case of Angelica, Manoel de Oliveira, 2010









So, a film that tests the divide between photography and manual labor, that shows us a man who, because his only claim on the physical world is through his camera, begins to drift away from it? Either way, an amazing film with Magritte-like specificity in its visuals. I'm sure that's a testament to the lighting, and yet the movie appears to exist in a world of only natural light. ~?~

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Rabbit Hole, on the other hand, appears to have been filmed using nothing but the most high-powered bulbs. Even in a bowling alley scene, the actors are bathed in a blinding heavenly glow. And yet, they do some good acting inside it.

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An exchange from Margin Call:

First guy: "You could have been digging ditches all these years."
Second guy: "Yeah, and if I had at least there'd be some holes to show for it."

I like that second guy (Kevin Spacey), I imagine he'd have a similar response if instead of "digging ditches" it was "doing nothing at all."

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Chronicle was great, I just sort of wish the father character had been a washed up former star of the grunge scene, collecting royalties, not a retired firefighter collecting disability.

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Some critics have been floating around the idea of a "Desert Island DVDs" list, which, according to the arbitrary but pretty smart rules laid down, must include ten feature films, one short film, and one self-contained season of a TV show. I don't exactly know what's meant by "self-contained," but I'm thinking my choice in the latter category would be the first season of Roseanne, not because those episodes were necessarily the funniest, but because in beholding the decor of the earliest incarnation of the Connors' family home (esp. the living room), I could endlessly explore my own childhood, while I sat there washed up on the shores of my mind on that desert island.


iii. Early 2012

Watch me drift away.















iv. Early 2013

I could easily end up back in Minneapolis. Some suggestions for improvement before I return:

1. Demolish the K Mart on Lake Street and pave Nicollet equally, north and south.
2. Let the Gay 90s buy Block E and turn it into a center for troubled teens. Staff it with the displaced workers from the K Mart.
3. Improve the bus transfer system. Here in Albuquerque, $1 buys you a one-way pass on the city bus, and $2 buys you an all-day pass. There's no 2-1/2 hour transfer limit to keep bus riders in a state of constant panic and crush their spirits.
4. Never let Eclipse Records go out of business again. Tax breaks?
5. Finish the light rail.


v. Listening habits

Saint Etienne's Sound of Water, tracks 6-9.


vi. Drinking habits

Non-existent. I'm so happy poverty has finally allowed me to overcome the embarrassment of ordering soda at the bar.


vii. Oscars

This year's Best Picture nominees look a lot better when I break them down into groups.

Excellent: The Descendants, Hugo, Midnight In Paris, Moneyball, The Tree Of Life, War Horse
Quite good: The Artist
Forever refuse to see: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help

My personal favorite is probably War Horse, but I'll never admit to it. So, my favorites in the top nine categories, with honorary props to the cast of Moneyball and the awesomeness of Kung Fu Panda 2...

Picture: Hugo
Director: Terrence Malick
Actress: Rooney Mara
Actor: Gary Oldman
Supporting Actress: Melissa McCarthy
Supporting Actor: Christopher Plummer
Adapted Screenplay: Moneyball
Original Screenplay: Midnight In Paris
Animated: Rango