US Grant Park

Portland has been park planning ever since it commissioned a survey in 1905, the results of which found that parks are essential to the quality of urban life (duh). Currently Portland has the most green acres per capita of any city in the U.S. Whatever that means, all I know is, PDX has got itself an official buttload of parks. A very long time ago I made it a mission to visit one a week until I'd seen all of them. Then...um...I stopped. And now...um...I'm starting again. Whatever! I can be as damned capricious as suits me. I am subject to the whims of none save my own.

Today I trudged over to US Grant Park, located in NE Portland. The park's 19 acres were acquired in 1922. Its namesake visited our fair burg three times in his life, no mean feat in the days before widespread train travel, but its best-known feature is its Beverly Cleary sculpture garden, established in 1995 & featuring statues of Ramona Quimby, Henry Huggins & Ribsy, fictional characters who all lived in NE Portland & frequented Grant Park. Time has swallowed nearly all of my memories of the books, but I loved me some Ramona Quimby when I was a child. However! I must admit, I find the statue sort of...disturbing. Like one of those stoic eyeless busts commemorating Roman emperors, only she's a grinning lifeless kid.


Eh. The park itself is very nice indeed, & if I lived closer, I would probably go there more. Except it has an off-leash area, so it's probably just stuffed to the gills with dogs in nice weather. My bones are cold, as it freakin' hailed throughout my two-mile walk over, but it was worth it because the sun came out for the half hour I was at the park & sun + precipitation = sparkles. I got several lovely pictures of the tennis court too.

Merry Christmas!

(There's a cute story involving me & the bicycle which deftly exemplifies the mind's capacity to experience wonder that defies knowledge.)

Folks Get Down In The Sunshine

23.12.2007 theme song:

Eddie Kendricks - "Date with the Rain"

It rained all day & night. At least from 9 a.m. to 4 a.m. It would have been a beautiful day to sit at home drinking tea & touching my new books. But no! My day was a three-mile walk to Northwest to acquire froufy Portlandia Christmas presents & then dinner & bars. It wasn't a date so much as assault. Blasted rain.

However, today I awoke to a pale white thing & mocking shards of blue sky piercing the vast canopy of gray. I even saw shadows for about 20 minutes. Which, in December's Oregon, passes for so much sunshine. Therefore!

24.12.2007 theme song:

Roy Ayers - "Everybody Loves the Sunshine"

Proof Pudding

Look! I can win at bowling! At least two games in a row! That makes three games I've won, ever. I think that merits a big ol' w00t!!!1!!1!




*Sniff*. I'm so proud of me. Um, I'm the kraut if you couldn't figure. Thanks to the mick for the pics.

Touch My Tummy & I Light Up!

Oh my. LIGHT-UP BATHTUB TOYS arrived yesterday on my doorstep. AKA "Disco Dinos". I lurve you, Skunk Keeler. They make my insides squiggly. Look!:


Yeah, I got out to grab my camera because they're so wonderful. So what? New rubber duckies + bath bomb from Lush (oh, sweet Lush) + leftover yet still bubbly prosecco from last night + [redacted for the sake of decency] = best Saturday bath EVER.

Also: remember when Ryan Adams was good? I didn't until I listened to a CD I made for a friend ages ago. And this song came on:

Whiskeytown - "Here's to the Rest of the World"

So wistful & gauzy yellow afternoon bar. I was compelled to run out & buy Faithless Street & Strangers Almanac straightaway.

Last but not least: I've got the whole "Dae Jang Geum" series to get me through the sopping wet of Oregon winter! It's s'posed to be kinda like "Iron Chef" crossed with a soap, all set in 16th century Korea. I feel like it exists solely for my benefit. Whoo hoo! Thanks ever so much to Albert.

Watch Out! Girl Genius At Work!

Many moons ago, in the wilds of western Massachusetts, I chipped one of my front teeth in a friendly tussle over a bottle of beer. Obviously, I had a fake tooth-part (no, I don't know the technical term) installed - I may have been raised in Scio, OR but that doesn't mean I have to look like it, dammit. And so, all was well.

Until last night, when I did something so embarrassingly stupid that I refuse to describe it. And knocked out said fake tooth-part.

Nice job, me. Way to go. Let's just make that whole teeth thing cost an even grand for 2007. Sweet! (21.12 EDIT: Apparently my dentist has a "buy five fillings get a fake tooth-part for free" deal. And he was able to see me yesterday. Excellent.)

The moral of the story is: I am forcing myself to go to sleep tonight. Like a normal person. Eight Six hours, at least, maybe more. All I am doing tonight is watching my freakin' "Lost" [21.12 EDIT: & Helvetica, a truly crappy documentary that makes an interesting subject dull]. No more staying up so late I'm afraid to go to sleep because I might not wake up! No more insane ventures, no more mad projects!

In short, no more tomfoolery.

At least until the weekend. Then I can try pulling out shelf pegs with my teeth at 4:30 in the morning to my heart's content. (Yeah, that's right, I said it. I confess.)

Blessed Art Thou; Or, It's Totally Your Lucky Day!

Gather the blankets & glasses of milk, bring the cookies if you got 'em, because it's time for a little story. (Mandy, stop pulling my hair & settle down!) Go back, back, waaaaay back here, to the big bang, aka the genesis of this here blog-thing. Following the standard "Hey world friends! This is my blog! Hey!" post, the very first thing I wrote about was a filmmaker by the name of Phil Solomon. The words were few, succinct (I used to try!) & heartfelt (to the max, Phil. Heh. I've hardly begun to exhaust my repertoire). What I did not mention was that I had actually had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Solomon on more than one occasion, in more than one state (& I use "state" with more than one meaning, naturally), over the course of several years. I even chauffeured him to TJ's house - that would be Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, for those who aren't hip to the C-ville slang - in a pick-up in, I think, 2004. Alas! sadly, that had been the last of it.

Until very recently, when Mr. Solomon found my feeble little post about him & left me a wonderful comment, which gave me a case of the warm fuzzies you wouldn't believe. Subsequently, memories were jogged & communications (re-)established. All to your benefit, friends, as I've laid my grubby little paws on clips from some of his films!

Now, I realize that I am slightly inclined toward hyperbole. I am simply helpless in the face of that with which I am enthralled, be it positively or negatively. My words can be a minefield of superlatives. However! If you took the whole of every aggrandizing statement I've ever made, every command & must & implore & love & amazing & so forth, & you put them in a mortar & mashed them to a splendidly redolent paste, the resulting bouquet would still not do these films justice.

My limited mind knows not how to provide a better introduction. Tell me you believe me. Better yet, just watch the clips. I provide them to you out of love. (And if you love me, you'll watch them, bitches.) Yes, they are necessarily but pale ghosts of the films entire; but after all, as Double Exposure so well put it, "Ten percent of something/It beats one hundred percent of nothing at all"!

The Passage of the Bride

Clepsydra

The Exquisite Hour

Nocturne

Remains To Be Seen

Seasons....

The Secret Garden

What's Out Tonight is Lost

Yes, I Said Yes, I Will, Yes

Psalm III: Night of the Meek

The Snowman

Psalm II: Walking Distance

Happy-Makers 2007 12 19

(You'll probably have to make the pictures bigger to get the full effect here.)

Why I love my video store:


There are also three shelves of "Demons, Devils & Their Worshipers".

Why I love my scary neighbors:


Yeah. That's Santa Claus. On a motorcycle. I know it's a terrible picture, but they are my scary neighbors, so I didn't want to get too close or use a flash, even if I made sure their lights were out. I never thought I'd miss tacky Christmas decorations; but I did. And they filled the void! I like to stand on my porch & ponder Bad-Ass Santa.

God Respects Us When We Work, But Loves Us When We Dance

Warning: the CDs be snug in their new, shelf-y homes. Which means I've got them all at my fingertips. Which, in turn, means I'm listening to stuff I nearly forgot I had. And could possibly be posting about it in unseemly amounts in the days &/or weeks to come.

But I don't think anything else I own could possibly ever come close to the song I just rediscovered, from the Soul Jazz release The World of Arthur Russell:

Arthur Russell - "In the Light of the Miracle"

I have never struggled so fiercely for a material thing in my life as for this compilation. So I'm not sure how I failed to realize before this that "In the Light of the Miracle" is it. The song. The one for which my feet in their red shoes will dance off into the forest without me (in a somewhat sunnier take on the tale). And when I rejoin them, it will be the song playing in my eternal disco, along with MFSB's "Love is the Message" (the Tom Moulton mix, ideally). Now that's an idea for a mix CD: the songs to which I want to dance in the forever. Hmm.

If your toes don't generally get to tapping, it's still a lovely piece of work. But you cannot truly understand what I mean unless you dance with it.

My propensity for delivering complicated drunken monologues on the beauty of disco & its social implications inches ever closer to notorious. At the risk of skipping like a scratched record, just listen to this song & try then to tell me that disco isn't worlds more than white polyester kitsch.

(Mr. Russell is experiencing quite the posthumous renaissance: my quick google search revealed no less than a documentary & a biography (by Tim Lawrence, which makes it extra exciting), both due in 2008. As for that which is already published, it's all a bit prosaic in light of the music itself, but this New Yorker article by Sasha Frere-Jones isn't bad.)

365 Little Days

It has been a tiny bit more than a year since I moved into my apartment with about three pieces of furniture & little else. Although I still feel I've an awfully long way to go, I have to admit I've also come an equally long way. Example:



I'm going to take this also as an occasion to state for the record that, yes, Heather, "if anything happens to me", you can have the Totoro clock (seen to the left of the couch there). As a surprise bonus, I will also leave you my copy of Trouble in Paradise, since you're the first person I've shown it to who thought it as absolutely funny as I.

I'll consider other requests.

Someone Tell Me What I'm Doing Wrong

Dear Miranda Lambert,

Please stop reading my diary. It's PRIVATE.

Miranda Lambert - Guilty In Here

Sincerely,
April

P.S. My past-life alternate-universe diary is ALSO PRIVATE.

Miranda Lambert - Gunpowder & Lead

Bringing You Down, Down, Down On Your Brazen Knees

I want a boy who will dress up like this for me! I s'pose I'd be willing to forego the socks & shoes (although they are utterly adorable). The sparkly shirt, however, would be non-negotiable.

*Sigh*. My dear Patrick Wolf. I want to make out with your songs. I would enter into matrimony with "Augustine". I would pop out "Accident & Emergency"'s babies like so many ping-pong balls in Asian sex clubs. And my, er, rather derogatory feelings toward marriage & babies both are secrets ill-kept. (Not to digress, but I suppose I feel that those ever so noble social conventions are not negative so much as they're pervasively useless, at least insofar as concerns your humble narrator.)

No joke, The Magic Position is easily one of my favorite albums ever. I haven't so single-mindedly listened to an album since 2000. But of course, it makes complete sense. The album itself is stuffed with joy & gloom in like amounts. It's completely cinematic, my definition of which includes both lushly orchestrated, whirling soundscapes & lyrics laden with imagery. Anyway, I can't explain it any better than I put it in a recent email: The album entire sings in the key of me.

"And now come the tears, heavy and hot/As it becomes clear, this is all we got/As I hold you to my bed/Like a cancer or a curse/Be my loving nurse/As we fall back into the impossible dream"

"Now deep in a forest/Losing all thought of spring/And nothing can help me remember/And I'm going nowhere fast/A darker day has holed at last/Deep in a dream I set the calmness to spinning"

"'Cause out of all the people I've known/The places I've been/The songs I have sung/The wonders I've seen/Now that the dreams are all coming true/Who is the one that leads me on through/It's you/Who puts me in the magic position, darling now/You put me in the magic position/To live, to learn, to love in the major key"

"We could go to the cinema/Big effects and big name stars/And we can go to that private view/But darling these days my favorite view is you"

Oh!

Because Really I Just Don't BUY Enough Stuff

After getting my DVD shelves up on the wall last week, I was alarmed & saddened to discover that I have far, far fewer DVDs than I had imagined. Apparently the attrition rate during the war was much higher than it looked when the DVDs were in boxes.

Although I was glad to see that the frivolous titles have been kept to a minimum (meaning that of the DVDs I own, the majority are ones which I truly love), & I am happy that in April-land Clueless sits next to The Conformist, as Mean Girls sidles up alongside Mulholland Drive, I realized also how very very few of my actual favorite movies I own. Not that I don't absolutely adore the ones I do own, but I'm talking about the ones that I respond to most on an emotional basis. The special ones. For me, there's a fine but clear delineation betwixt films that touch my head & films that go beyond & take up residence in my heart. I mean, I admire Citizen Kane twelve ways to Sunday, but I don't love it. I've got a few of 'em on hand, to be sure - Wings of Desire. Au Hasard Balthazar. A Little Princess (want early evidence of Alfonso Cuaron's cinematic talents? Skip the tepid Great Expectations adaptation & start here. Damn thing makes me bawl like a baby every time I see it & it's deathly gorgeous to boot).

Thanks to evil Amazon & my temporary delusion of disposable cash, I have attempted to remedy this situation in my own small way.


First: I finally broke down & bought the Criterion Collection release of Naked. Seeing as I was moved to actually email them the title as a suggestion several years ago, I figured since they lived up to their end of things by actually releasing it, I'd better pony up & buy the damn thing already. Out of all the trenchant & cutting things said in that film, this is my favorite, courtesy of Johnny:

"Was I bored? No, I wasn't fuckin' bored. I'm never bored. That's the trouble with everybody - you're all so bored. You've had nature explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the living body explained to you and you're bored with it, you've had the universe explained to you and you're bored with it, so now you just want cheap thrills and like plenty of them, and it don't matter how tawdry or vacuous they are, as long as it's new, as long as it's new, as long as it flashes and fuckin' bleeps in forty fuckin' different colors. So whatever else you can say about me, I'm not fuckin' bored. "

Words to live by.


Second: Yay! It Happened One Night! Yay! One of my all-time most favoritest movies ever. The film that killed off men's undershirt sales because of the scene pictured above. The first film to sweep the Big 5 at the Oscars (picture, director, screenplay, actor & actress- only One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest & The Silence of the Lambs have done it since). The movie no one wanted to make at the studio for which no one wanted to work - the two leads were forced into it. Featuring the lovely Claudette Colbert. Also Clark Gable (no especial favorite of mine, truth be told). Frank Capra at his finest. I've adored this film madly ever since I was 16, so it's about time I actually had it at my permanent disposal.


Third: Oh, those Germans. It was bothering me that insofar as (1) I love Werner Herzog & (2) I spent an inordinate amount of time watching his films in college, the only title I actually owned of his was Grizzly Man. A most excellent film indeed, but hardly the one upon which his international renown was built. I remembered that there exists a boxed set of all the work Mr. Herzog did with Klaus Kinski (& if you don't know anything about their relationship, well, I heartily recommend delving into it. Kinski on Herzog: "I wish he would catch the plague, more than ever." Herzog on Kinski: "We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder". More quote fun here.). Amazon's got it for 50% off list price - that's six titles for $45 - what works out to $7.50 each. And being a compendium of his work with Kinski, of course it's some of his absolute finest stuff - Aguirre, the Wrath of God (although I think the German title is far more fierce-sounding: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes); Fitzcarraldo; Woyzeck; Nosferatu the Vampyre; Cobra Verde; and the nonfiction film Herzog made about Kinski, called My Best Fiend. I think I'm most excited about revisiting Fitzcarraldo, although I think Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror & Herzog's "re-imagining" make for a spectacular double feature - every time I see either of them, my admiration for the actor portraying the title character (Max Shreck in the former; Kinski, naturally, in the latter) grows leaps & bounds. They're both absolutely astonishing.


Fourth: My neighbor Totoro, To-to-ro. Totoro, To-to-ro. Heh! I waited a long while for My Neighbor Totoro to be released as it deserves: wide-screen, with the original Japanese audio track. Previously it was available only in a full-screen English-dubbed version. Now, finally, it comes back to my lovin' arms, more glorious than ever.

A-B-C-D-E-F-G

Hee hee! I'm the world's biggest alphabetizing dork. Seriously. I love alphabetizing. It gives me great happiness. Creating order out of chaos in my own small way. The pleasure, however brief, of basking in the comforting beauty of the finite & graspable. The Feeling of getting something accomplished skipping hand in hand down the path with the Sensation of mental relaxation. I only wish my life provided me more frequent opportunities to indulge. I suspect that secretly this is why I'm letting my CD organization take days & days & days - because after the CDs, I've only the records, & then all the fun goes away.

No. That's not true. Don't lie to yourself, Self. If I'd had my druthers that shit would have been done by Friday. The 20-hour class'n'test combo & various social commitments I had last week are what kept me from finishing. But now that I've caught up on sleep - I will undoubtedly be amazed for months that I slept from 2:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday - well, I don't think anything can hold me back.

The (1st) step is categorizing. This is easy. I have Disco/Funk, Electronic & Everything Else (I used to try to be all categorical with the Everything Else too, but I found that all that meant was I spent more time looking for things because I couldn't remember as what they had been classified). The (2nd) is my beloved alphabetizing. The (3rd) is chronological arrangement within the alphabetical structure, which is also easy - any artist whose work is owned in sufficient quantity as to warrant chronological arrangement is most likely an artist with whose discography I have a fair amount of familiarity.

Except, for some reason, Fila Brazilia - I can never remember whether Power Clown or Luck Be a Weirdo Tonight comes first.

Merry Christmas, Me

Since this evening past I spent more hours devising the following scheme than sleeping, I am generously passing the pain on to you.

I've decided that my Christmas present to myself is going to be finishing up the record room. As my loyal reader may recall, I recently-ish painted the walls up there. And never did the rest of what needed doing. BUT. I am finally utterly fed up at having all of my CDs & records & DVDs in boxes. Even if it's only been a year & a half. SO. Thanks to the miracle of the Christmas bonus, I am going to get my ass in gear & do the following:

(1) Paint the floor! Unfortunately or fortunately, depending, this is absolutely without question the first thing I have to do. It's going to be a fair bit of work, which may or may not involve sanding the whole floor &/or primer, but will definitely involve some serious cleaning, painting & multiple coats of polyurethane. It will probably take me days.

(2) Finalize my media storage plans. I think I have, but it's hard to tell. Last night I stayed up waaaay too late taking measurements & I decided that the record room is clearly the most ridiculous room ever in the history of the world. Check it:

All the height weirdness is due to the fact that nearly every one of the eight walls are angled in totally bizarro ways. To wit:


(3) I figured out that only the right part of wall 1, plus walls 2 (pictured above) & 5, are usable for shelving (I'm putting a table for the record players in front of the windows, eventually). Which means that contrary to my clever notions, only my records are able to be shelved in the record room. I've decided that three of these Expedit bookcases (turned on the side, of course) are going to have to do the trick. Hopefully, I can fit all the records on them. Hopefully.

(4) Since the CDs apparently aren't going in there anymore, they will have to go in the actual loft, against these walls:


Which are also problematic, as you can see. Ignore the fact that I'm not done painting the loft, either. I'm thinking my best bet here is to go with four of the Benno CD towers in silver (or possibly red, depending on how it compares to the red I will (one day) paint the loft) & keep my fingers crossed that they hold all my CDs. I mean, 180 x 4 = 720, sooo...I hope that's enough. I don't know. I've got boxes & boxes & more boxes of them & I haven't exactly done a thorough count.

(5) And then what of my DVDs?!?! There are far fewer of those than anything else, at least. Ultimately I determined that they will simply have to go in the living room. Appearances to the contrary, there actually is an unphotographed angle in my apartment, but they will be going on the wall above & to the right of the buffet:


I'm going to grab six of these Lerberg wall shelves in dark grey; turned vertically, they will hold DVDs. Ideally, I will only need five of them, & then I can put the sixth horizontally on the wall near my stereo, to hold whatever CDs I have in current rotation.

Bleech. The only thing I can do right now are the DVD shelves, because in a matter of hours I will be in hardcore insurance dork mode through Saturday. Luckily, the Sheraton is right near the IKEA, so I'm gonna go pick up the shelves tonight!

Sadness.

When will it end? A succinct update:

1) Trying to figure out how to stop paying a loan when the object of that loan is defunct, without getting bad shit on my credit report. Have spoken with three different Wells Fargo departments & left a message with the last, the Total Loss Department. Am calling them tomorrow if they don't call me.

2) Trying to figure out how to not get in trouble with Wells Fargo over my insurance. The car is totaled - what's the point in paying for insurance? Still, my insurance company has not canceled or even notified Wells Fargo of the loss.

3) I need some documents from my insurance company in order to file a stop gap claim. The woman I spoke to regarding my insurance at Wells Fargo told me to ride those stop gap people like a harpy straight outta hell (okay, she didn't say that...I'm paraphrasing), because they royally fucked her daughter over when she totaled her car. So now I'm worried & I'm gonna ride my auto damage adjuster like a harpy until I get the documents I need to file with the stop gap people. And oh! they will live to rue the day, if they try to screw with me.

4) Just found out that I was supposed to file an accident report with the Oregon DMV within 72 hours of the accident. Whoopsy. Also I have to fill out an Application for Salvage Title. Sweet!

5) I still have to get my shit out of the dead car. The salvage yard is only open M-F 8:30 to 4:30, & it's all the way out by the airport, so my plan is to go there Wednesday, because my latest insurance dork-fest class starts that day & is only a few miles away.

6) Speaking of the dead car, I found a special treat on the Geico website today:


It's so tragic! Also, don't forget: I am driving between 5 to 10 mph when this happens. I really, really wish I knew how fast that other guy was going. Also whether he even had his fucking headlights on.

Boompty Boomp!

I clearly need more friends who like house music.

Derrick fucking Carter is playing at my house, dammit! It's funny, 'cause I've definitely missed out on a lot of DJs around here - Mark Farina, DJ Dan, etc. - that I really do love (well, I gotta say, I stopped with DJ Dan after about six or seven CDs, because, um, they actually do all sound the same). Anyway, generally speaking, while I enjoy listening to them, most house mixes are too damn fast for my tired old body to even contemplate keeping up with in a live setting. So I've just kind of skipped 'em.

But...I mean...it's DERRICK CARTER. House Music Legend (tm). He's boompty, not "boom-chk-boom-chk-boom-chk". Shit, he created the boompty boomp. He's got a track about friends & tater tots, people! He's just adorable & I love him madly. And the show's only fifteen dollars.


Sigh. I don't really want to go alone, but I just might have to. Damn PDX indie kids.