As promised, here’s a photo of my first painting. Click on it for a bigger view. I made this piece in response to the cafe manager, Alli, declaring that the only art on display in the cafe during the month of March would be created by the staff. As I couldn’t rig up a projector or a plasma screen I couldn’t contribute a piece of video art, so I had to think of another way of getting at least one image onto the wall.
I’ve just discovered this link to a treasure trove of Public Information Films, some of which I remember seeing on the telly, like Say No to Strangers. There’s a creepily odd one called Strange Caller with a fantastic innuendo at the end, a young skinny Rolf Harris urging you to teach youngsters to swim, and about a hundred more.
Scientists said the animal, which they named Kiwa hirsuta, was so distinct from other species that they created a new family and genus for it. The divers found the animal in waters 7,540 feet deep at a site 900 miles south of Easter Island last year, according to Michel Segonzac of the French Institute for Sea Exploration. […] The animal is white and just shy of 6 inches long — about the size of a salad plate. In what Segonzac described as a “surprising characteristic,” the animal’s pincers are covered with sinuous, hair-like strands. It is also blind. The researchers found it had only “the vestige of a membrane” in place of eyes, Segonzac said.
To me Kiwa Hirsuta looks like an H.R. Giger creation. If I were Michel Segonzac I’d be very careful.
[…]the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld accused Iran of dispatching elements of its Revolutionary Guard to stir trouble inside Iraq. Mr Rumsfeld said: “They are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq and we know it. And it is something that they, I think, will look back on as having been an error in judgment.”
Today I edited video for about ten hours, and painted for a further hour or so. Consequently I’m too tired to blog anything particularly worthwhile, other than to note that I’m excited about both projects, and that it feels good to be so busy working creatively. I do, however, have the mental juice left to point everyone at the latest Doonesbury cartoon. I must confess it took me a long time to actually get into Doonesbury as so much of it is about US politics, but it’s generally perceptive and clear-headed.
The painting, if you’re wondering, isn’t freehand stuff and it’s not really pointillism, although I’m painting lots of dots. It will all become clearer when I finish the piece and post pictures on the blog. I think it’ll look pretty decent. It’s about all sorts of things, but quite a large chunk is about how our lives are becoming a convergence of the physical and the digital.
The closure of 25 McDonalds “restaurants” in the UK has prompted a tremendous celebratory article by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian. I dream of the day when the only McDonalds in the UK will be those frequented by homesick American tourists.
If this article means what I think it means, then Douglas Adams has been reaffirmed. It seems that a quantum computer has managed to find the answer to a question without knowing what the question was in the first place, just like a certain computer in Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The mind boggles.
…and coat, skirt, blouse, bra and knickers too, to the naked ramblers, Steve Gough and Melanie Roberts, who have just walked from Land’s End, the most southerly tip of the UK mainland, to John O’Groats, the most northerly.
I’ve always harboured a secret desire to hike naked about the British Isles, or anywhere, really. But that’s not really news to anyone who knows me well enough. I’m tempted to replicate Mr Gough’s endeavour in the US, but I think I’d probably get shot as many times as he was arrested.
Quickest customer of the day in Mishka’s:
She: I’m gonna get a latte.
I: Certainly, what size?
She: A $3 one.
I: OK.
I ring her order into the cash register and look at her expectantly.
She: How much is that?
We have an opening date for the Varsity, April 6th. I’ve also allowed myself to be roped in to promoting the opening night. All sorts of interesting plans are afoot, but for now you can check out the Davis Wiki entry for the cinema, and the official site, www.thedavisvarsity.com, a preliminary version of which is now online.
My movie, now titled The Varsity Story, is progressing fairly well. I’m shooting yet more material at some point in the next week. Any time I’m not in the coffee shop it seems I’m shooting or editing the movie, or promoting the cinema. It feels good to be busy working on something I care about.
My good friend Jeff has an exhibition of paintings starting on 1st March in Gino’s cafe, Sacramento. Called Unearthed, it’s a series of abstracts ranging from the folksy to the formal.
I wasn’t a huge fan of Beth Orton’s previous album, Daybreaker, but I’m back in love with her thanks to the new one, Comfort of Strangers. Produced by Jim O’Rourke, who’s been working with Wilco recently, it’s pure Beth stripped of the lavish arrangements that characterised Daybreaker. Consequently her voice returns to the fore, complete with its endearing quirks and occasional flashes of Naarfolk accent. Folksy.
I also treated myself to a long-overdue Django Reinhardt album, 1949’s Djangology, recorded in Rome with Stephane Grappelli. I’ve been using a version of Django’s Minor Swing to time my editing of the Varsity Documentary opening sequence. I’m not going to be able to use it in the final film for copyright reasons, so I hope the musician who’s helping me out will be able to deliver something with a similar feel and exactly the same timing!
I’ve been into Django since I was a little ‘un, thanks to Mum and David-Dad taking me to the Upton Jazz Festival every year. The event is always overburdened with mediocre old white beardy trad players, but there is always one stage dedicated to Hot Club style gypsy jazz, and that’s where we’d hang out. Over the years I’ve seen many, many excellent Djangologists, including Manouche gypsy Fapy Lafertin, but all of them had the use of all the fingers on their left hands (the tendons of Django’s pinkie and ring fingers were damaged in a caravan fire when he was eighteen). A couple of days ago I came across a video file of Django complete with a close-up on his two-fingered fretboard style. It was a pretty wonderful thing to behold.
Click here to see the movie, and click here to see where I got it from. The WFMU page also has a link to France Gall performing dirty old Serge Gainsbourg’s Poupee De Cire, Poupee De Son. Cracking.
Yesterday the sun was shining, the sky was blue and I was seized by an uncanny urge to buy a barbeque, so I did. Refusing to tell Courtney what was up I ushered her into the car and drove to a hardware shop in the town centre.
“Where are we going?” she asked, “I’m so confused.”
I did not reply. I just grinned and let her figure out what was up.
In the event, Courtney was just as excited as me to be buying a barbeque. We settled for a circular charcoal grill with three legs, two wheels, vents on the bottom and a round top. We bought metal skewers, a barbeque spatula, a metal cleaning brush, a bag of charcoal and a bottle of lighter fluid and returned home well pleased.
Continuing my mission to reach a better understanding of the strange land I currently inhabit, last Sunday I went with Tom, aka Politco Wonk, to see my first basketball game.
Behold my first attempt at scones! They taste every bit as good as they look, and they were pretty easy to make. I’m basking in a warm yellowy self-satisfied glow right now. The ladies at Courtney’s Margaret Atwood book group should be well fed tonight. Click here for a screenful of food porn goodness!
According to this slick-looking website, to which I sent the picture above, I look like a mixture of: Rosanna Arquette, Hrithik Roshan, Ralph Nader, Dave Mustaine, Pierce Brosnan, Hilary Swank, Doris Lessing, Neve Campbell, Nick Cave, and Arthur Rimbaud. Who’d have thought?
Of course, I tried a different photo, which proved conclusively that I am the bastard child of the moronic Dan Quayle and the magnificent Meryl Streep. So, who do I really look like? Answers in the comments if you can think of anyone.
During my link harvesting I discovered that Nick Cave was born and raised in the town of Warracknabeal, where a far-flung branch of my family owns a restaurant.
The Varsity doumentary is coming along. I shot interviews two weekends ago, and now I’m amassing documents. Above is an original lobby card for the first movie to play in the Varsity cinema on June 9th 1950. By all accounts, it was a bit of a B movie, albeit one presented in glorious Technicolor.
Update: 1st Feb 2006
On further investigation, it seems that The Eagle and the Hawk was in fact the original Brokeback Mountain, as this alternative version of the lobby card conclusively proves. Who’d have thought? Thanks to Jeff for sending that along. ;-)
This is a snap of the Central Valley taken by Courtney from the aeroplane that brought us back to California after Thanksgiving in New York. The original was very hazy and washed-out. I boosted the contrast and reduced the brightness until this image emerged. Then I forgot about it until today.
I thought that taking a year out before university was something you did to broaden your mind and get some experience of the real world. Perhaps no-one told this nutter, who has chosen to spend an entire year in Disneyworld, at a cost of about $100,000. That’s going to look really good on his university application forms.
There’s something very Pet Shop Boys about the underside of our new non-slip chopping board.
From the Random House website:
From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982.
David Mitchell himself says:
It’s about 13 months in the life of a 13 year old boy. It’s set in a small, narrow village in South Worcestershire that the narrative only leaves twice. It’s 1982, in the cold war, and the year of the Falklands war.
Source: The Agony Column Book Reviews.
Knowing that Mitchell is from my neck of the woods, and knowing that neck just as well as he, I’d suggest that Black Swan Green is the name of the village in which Jason Taylor lives, and that the real-life precedent for that village is Hanley Swan. I’m going to have to wait until April to find out if I’m right.
No, this is not a reference to the modernist poet. It’s an expression of excitement because my Final Cut upgrade arrived today. I’m ready to roll with editing, now all I need is some footage.
Also, I now have the funds I need to set the Varsity documentary in motion. It’s a tiny budget, but just about workable.
A mysterious box arrived in our apartment yesterday. The contents of the box made it possible to bring you this daft little film, (14.5mb). If you click on the link and just see a big blue Q and nothing seems to be happening, don’t worry. The movie just takes a while to download.
Technically, I think Courtney’s parents are the executive producers for the movie, as they provided the editing station. Thanks, in-laws!
Oooh. What is it? Or, more to the point, what has just taken our photograph?
