The Friday after the Thursday

Just a few notes since my last post...

I watched "Most High" and "Keane" a couple nights ago, both dealing with the madness that accompanies drug addiction or the loss of a child, respectively. The lead in "Most High" (also the writer and director) drops from 240 lbs to 125 during the course of the two years it took to make the film and that visual change marks the drastic impact of his addiction on his slide downwards to inevitable death. When his support base is pulled out from under him, he turns to crystal meth and it does what it does best. There were interstitials of real interviews with recovering addicts that did get incorporated in a meaningful way at the end. "Keane" follows a man franticly searching for his daughter who disappeared while with him in a subway terminal, drinking himself into oblivion, and generally coming undone. As it unfolds it becomes less and less clear if she ever existed, but that he has lost it and the search is a mechanism he uses to try and hold his fractured world together. A neighbor with a young daughter makes a connection and through that the lead is able to begin taking steps in a positive direction. Or at least that is my interpretation. The film is shot extremely close, similar to the effect in "Le Fils" (another powerful character study of forgiveness and growth. Highly recommended.) and this ratchets up the tension significantly. You are right in the characters face the whole time and get none of the context/surrounding visual input we are so conditioned to including in our assessment of a situation.

Tonight I watched "Sorstalansag/Fateless", a Hungarian Holocaust movie. Nearly two and a half hours of depression inducing horror and life affirming hope. Our protagonist is a 14 year old Hungarian Jew (in a haunting performance), who is arrested on his way to work and sent to a holding camp, before the journey to Auschwitz Birkenau. He is a survivor and his is a true story and we see the conditions worsen and worsen as the siege against body and soul rages on relentless. It is graphic in its portrayals (maggots in open wounds) and yet beautiful because the human spirit can endure so much when hope remains alive (a friend teaching him how to survive the inhumane conditions). Freed from the camps at the end of the war he returns to Budapest to try and start life again only to face rejection from his families former friends and neighbors, who find it easier to ignore him than acknowledge the evil they allowed to occur. Holocaust movies are especially difficult for me since I have both Jewish and German ancestry. This was a heartbreaking one. There is some exceptional cinematography here that really turns some terrible scenes into things of beauty.

I also heard the most beautiful track I've heard in a long time this past weekend. It was a Krome Angels' track called "KrisKrosRythms". Krome Angels are a psytrance supergroup with Shanti Matkin (Juvenile), Frederic Holyszewski (Deedrah, The GBU, Transwave), and Dino Psaras (Phreaky, Cydonia, Bullet Proof) , each a cornerstone of the genre in their own right and the combination seems to bring out the best in all of them. For whatever reason (bless them for it!) in KrisKrosRythms they break down into one of my favorite tracks by Ulrich Schnauss, "A Song About Hope". Pure bliss. And, sadly, not nearly long enough. And also, sadly, not officially released. Yet. I might be persuaded to pass it along if anyone asks nicely.

This is web design at its most staggering. It will cause pain to the viewer. You have been warned.

The Orphanage freakout

Okay, it has been an hour since I walked out of the theatre and I'm not shaking nearly as much at this point. I felt like I could have fainted on the drive up to Angwin, but taking deep breaths and repeating the mantra "Holy Fuck" got me up the hill. Holy fuck that was freaky. Holy fuck that had a gut wrenching twist at the end. Holy fuck that was AMAZING. Those of you that know me, know that I do not swear often, but shit shit shit that was a major mindfuck. I liked it a lot.

I've seen this classified as horror/drama/mystery/thriller, and the horror designation made me wary because I really have no interest in gore or slashfests, but I figured with the involvement of Guillermo Del Toro, it would not really be horror or at least not that type of horror. I'm glad I was right. There are definite horror elements but they take a backseat to a multilevel thrill ride. I can't remember the last time I felt like all the blood had drained from my body and chills were running down my spine quite like this. I also can't remember EVER hearing so many audible gasps, "Sweet Jesus" or "Shit" exclamations throughout a film. Maybe the throat cutting scene in Cache or the hit and run scene in Mermaid, but those were single scenes, not a repeating theme. The twist towards the end made me want to die right then and there out of empathy for the central character and her realization at that moment.

Most people think of Disney when they think of fairy tales. They forget that many of those stories were originally created by the brothers Grimm and most do not have "happy endings". I do not know if Peter Pan has a correlating Grimm story, but The Orphanage is a Peter Pan story fully in that tradition. One more time: Holy Fuck! Seriously......

The Wednesday after the Tuesday

I forgot to throw out that if anyone is interested, I'm heading to the orphanage on Thursday at 8:15. It was executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro, the director of "Pan's Labyrinth". And just in time for bed, another piece by Reggie Noble the second. This time I'm including the "o"riginal and his modification for comparison (no outside sources used).

The Tuesday before the Wednesday

I was at a meeting for the local Amnesty International chapter on Saturday afternoon. Since I am not a member it was interesting to listen to a little of the organization's history and how it has evolved to what it is now. Since this meeting was associated with Pacific Union College there was a definite emphasis on cases involving Christians, especially SDA's (conscientious objectors still imprisoned from the conflict in Kosovo in 1999-2000; widespread religious harassment in Tajikistan even though their constitution protects freedom of religion) although that is not a particular emphasis of AI. One of the primary activities of AI is letter writing and one of their focuses right now leading up to the Olympics in China is the case of Shi Tao a journalist who is in prison for using a Yahoo email account to forward a government edict on suppressing news coverage of the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests. It was a sobering reminder of how much we take for granted here in America and how free we still are despite the obscene erosions our freedoms are undergoing.

Later that afternoon I took a leisurely five mile hike in Bell Canyon to see the new construction going on there. There are a series of lots, about 20 acres each, that are landlocked with no easements (and therefore no access for the owners). One owner has apparently fought his way through the legal machinations to get a road put in to his piece and we went to see how it was going. There is already a beautiful horse barn built and they have started marking out the riding corral. The foundation for the main house has been spray painted on the site, but they have to wait until April 1st to do any earthwork for erosion control reasons. The siting is curious and probably so out of necessity, which is a shame. When you follow the driveway in you pass a couple exquisite viewpoints encompassing all of Bell Canyon, parts of the Napa Valley and even down to the East Bay, but by the time you get to the ridge finger where the home will be built you have dropped down enough that the view is obliterated. For all the money that will go into that palace it will be a let down to drive by that view every day and have none of it from the house.

Sunday was a work day. I loaded, hauled, and unloaded 4 truck loads of leaves to our mulch mountain, while my parents rototilled and weeded parts of the garden. We also trimmed several of the trees in the orchard (almost too late since they are in bloom, but it needed to be done), transplanted a bunch of lettuce back to where it belonged, and cleaned off the climbing fences for the tomatoes, peas, and cucumbers. I'm still sore from all the shoveling, but it was nice to be outside in the sun and get some variation to my exercise. Once the sun was down, I was free again and headed over to R+D's for a little barbecue. George was presiding over the kebobs and eggplant and a number of other people were coming and going. Richard got the new theatre sound system working and a few of us broke it in with "Bladerunner", the classic starring Uncle Harry. I had to look up Uncle Sugar's film after we talked about him. It was a masterpiece entitled "Escape from Survival Zone" and spawned the in-joke line "Let her goooooooooo!!!!!!!". While looking that up I was reminded of his 3 second head shot as Lawyer#1 in "The Game". Good times.

After getting home I watched "Tam, gdzie zyja Eskimosi" and was disappointed. It is a Polish/German film set in Bosnia circa 1995, with a phony UNICEF agent working for the child slavery/organ harvesting rings that prey on those with little hope. It is supposed to be a feel good journey of the boy and the man rediscovering their humanity together amid, but I never could buy into it. The boy is cute, things fall into place just a little too easily, and there was an aura of after school special hanging heavy over the whole production. For a really moving Polish film try and track down "Wrony". As far as I know it is only available on VHS in the US, but even so it is worth finding. I think I still have a working copy at home somewhere. Enough for this post... til tomorrow.

Today's quotation from work fits me too well and I hope to be changing that if I can:
"Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart; and his friends can only read the title." Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

"Anime's greatest strength—also its most consistent weakness—is its imagination and ambiguity. Animation isn't restricted by what can be filmed and what can be developed as special effects; anything can be drawn, and anything can be connected. For great anime directors, like Satoshi Kon (Perfect Blue), it allows for a truly malleable reality—a puzzle of imagination. In the hands of lesser artists, it simply becomes a visual playground without logic and rules." Joel Pearce of DVDVerdict in his review of "Tekkonkinkreet". Another reviewer remarked that it is"often pushing the psychedelic boundaries a little too far for mainstream success." And that is precisely why anime still intrigues me and why Tekkonkinkreet was a visual treat. I watched the second half of the film after my birthday last Thursday while on the stationary bike at 1 am. Black and White, the two supernatural orphans that make up the soul of Treasure Town, are so named because they are yin/yang and can only protect their town by combining their abilities. White is extremely naive, living in a far more fantastic world than the dreary reality of his abandoned car home. Black is much more hardened, capable of violence, and aware of the dangers the two of them face. This is not a typical anime since it is an international project; the new blood brought into the project can be clearly seen and is very much welcome. The backgrounds are beautiful simply as they are.

I finished "Last Orders" by Graham Swift recently and while there were good stretches in the book and I did get into it more at the end, there were too many characters to keep track of (as the story is told in first person and jumping between the characters). It tells of the journey (both internal and literal) of four friends going to spread the ashes of their dead compatriot, but at least 12 points of view are given and I lost a lot of momentum early on because of the frequent POV changes. Two excerpts below for a flavoring:

"But the outcast and the outlawed have to die too, the shunned and the forgotten, and somewhere there's a reluctant relative who has to step uneasily forward. And you never ask, it's not your place, what exactly this death means to them. Though you can see sometimes it's not the simple, neat thing they'd hoped for, a merciful release."

"There was a strap rubbing on one of my shoes, my new shoes, so I gave him the teddy bear while I stooped down to fiddle. Maybe I just wanted to hide my face. And I think even as I handed it to him I knew what he was going to do. There he was for a moment, a grown man, on the end of a pier, holding a teddy bear, a man on the end of a pier. He looked at it for an instant like he didn't know what it had to do with him. Then he stepped nearer the railings. And then there wasn't any teddy bear, there was just Jack. Goodbye Jack."

"Electraglide" by vikingkungfubar, "Red #8" by TelefunkenU47, "Onion" by ElChode, and "Small" by ReggieNoble2.

Links

WTF #1

WTF #2

Usually our company portal has a serious quote of the day and I do not know what source they are pulled from but this showed up this week. I don't think too many people saw it, or there would have been more comments, I'm sure:

" A woman's a woman no matter how small,
They're not to be trusted - not trusted at all!" the late great Dr. Seuss

If you have never heard of classics like Tuscan Whole Milk, or the Playmobil Airport Security Checkpoint Playset, or the Bic pen, you have not experienced the true joy of Amazon reviews. My stomach hurts every time.

Round up

Last weekend's party was much more successful than I had thought it would be. I had been somewhat pessimistic going in and it could easily have been a lot of work for very little reward, but I really had fun. Dust and Broadkaster both played good energetic sets and it is very gratifying to play to a crowd that is enjoying themselves and giving you good feedback. I played a very different set than I had intended, but it went over well as evidenced by the number of sweaty people wanting to give me hugs. It was good to see a number of friends and a couple of completely unexpected faces that blew me away. I liked the space as well and if it weren't for the great distance between here and there, I could easily see that being used regularly.



While down south, I got a bunch of pictures from last years BurningMan, including a short clip of Andi and me in a dust storm (I'll post it when I'm in a location with a better internet connection). Wonderful memories.....




Yesterday was my birthday and it was a good one. I went with a group of friends to the El Dorado Kitchen in Sonoma. I think everyone agreed the food was very good. I'm lucky to have the group of friends I have. Even at work, I had "Happy Birthday" sung three times (okay after the second time it was overkill, but at least I know they love me) and my boss brought in a great cake to the office. I also ended up with three books even though I did not really want presents (and they all look to be interesting ones).

"I’m sure many people played a similar mental game as kids: If you had to choose, which of the five senses would you give up first until you were left with only one. I recall surrendering the senses of smell and taste with little fanfare. Deliberations were somewhat longer to eliminate the sense of touch, but by the wayside it eventually went. Then the real struggle began: sight or sound? To drink in the visual tapestries of the world around me in a vacuum of silence or to be locked in a place of darkness with music and voices and tones as my bridge to the rest of humanity, which would be easier to accept? Every time I played this decision tree through my mind I would ultimately settle on keeping the branch of sound. Music has become an extension of emotion for me, a place of salvation and release, my drug of choice. My decision today has to stay the same….

For most it remains a game; a fanciful exercise of the imagination. Few will ever face anything like this in real life. For me, nature has cruelly conspired to set in motion the process that will take the choice out of my hands and make it real; far more real than I care to believe yet, but denial can only last so long. I am going blind. And it scares me.

I always had bad eyesight although I was unaware of it until others realized I could not see some of the things they were trying to show me off in the distance. Soon I had glasses and the self consciousness they brought. Eventually in high school I was able to get contacts and they held my eyes in check. There was very little degradation of my eyes for nearly a decade. Then like the slippery slope, the eyes started getting worse. At this juncture it is no longer an “if” but a “when”. In some ways, I have been preparing for this without even knowing it. My grandfather lost the sight in his left eye to cataracts nearly thirty years ago and after my grandmother died seven years ago, he had shingles from the stress of her death and it attacked his good eye. For seven years I have observed how limited his world has become. At the age of 93, he is in otherwise perfectly good health, has no medical problems or medication to take, but he is isolated by his blindness. He does love to have us visit and talk and yet there is a palpable sadness in many of those conversations because his mind is still clear and he knows what he has lost. He could keep himself endlessly entertained if he could still see (and read), but that option is long gone. That world will be my world.

The inevitability is there and I am not interested in denying my fate, but it does become an interesting motivator. I have an enormous number of books I keep gnawing away at and close to a hundred films I have stockpiled but not yet seen. I am working in earnest to spend the next two years traveling the world to see as much of it as I can before it all goes dark for me. How long do I have? No one can say for sure. I hope to make the most of the time I do have and immerse myself as completely as possible in the visual stimuli I find around me. And maybe I will come to view this transitional phase of my life as a blessing, although it is difficult to couch it in those terms now."

Til the Dust Settles....

Tonight I am dj'ing for the first time in quite a while at a party in Riverside. The party is called Psyberia and I'll get a flyer scanned in if I can manage to get one. I probably should be more nervous than I am, but I'm comfortable with the music I have with me and never like to plan out more than five tracks into a set anyway. Otherwise, you can not really react if the crowd (used loosely in conjunction with most of the parties I play at) is not picking up what you are putting down. We are heading over to the space in a couple hours to see how things are going. Broadkaster and Dust have both been practicing this morning and it should be a fun evening.

Josh and I had a safe drive down to Lala Land with slight hiccups via an unscheduled detour in Brentwood and fog on the Grapevine. Josh even overcame his anxiety and was able to keep the cruise control on 80 during his shift just before Bakersfield. I don't know if my car will be making too many more trips like this, but it has been a faithful companion on many adventures.