On Saturday I ate dim sum for brunch and bone marrow for dinner. Served on toasted brioche with a sauce of oxtail and goodness. I am well-fed, multicultural and altogether virtuous.
Sunday was for lounging, painting new apartments, extended farewells.
Monday is Monday.
lunes, septiembre 29, 2003
viernes, septiembre 26, 2003
Bah
From Homo Zapiens by Victor Pelevin:
"In the West both the client who ordered advertising and the copywriter tried to brainwash the consumer, but in Russia the copywriter's job was to screw with the client's brains."
Judging from the circus that is ocurring at my work today (about ten fake employees, cubicles highly stylized for the event, the floors redone, utilization of recommended low-cut jeans/heels, a projected atomosphere of very fake 'hipness' etc.) Mr. Pelevin is wrong.
"In the West both the client who ordered advertising and the copywriter tried to brainwash the consumer, but in Russia the copywriter's job was to screw with the client's brains."
Judging from the circus that is ocurring at my work today (about ten fake employees, cubicles highly stylized for the event, the floors redone, utilization of recommended low-cut jeans/heels, a projected atomosphere of very fake 'hipness' etc.) Mr. Pelevin is wrong.
Too bad I left White Teeth on a plane last summer and never finished it because I saw Zadie Smith at a reading in Central Park this summer and think she's pretty amazing. Instead of reading from The Autograph Man she opted to read instead the essay she wrote as prologue for the next installment of America's Best Non-Required Reading (whose annoying qualities I won't delve into in detail here.)
She spoke profusely about the immense and scary weight of the Western Literary Canon, for those who prioritize it over new or experimental fiction. She said that indeed, for a long time she would read Daniel DeFoe over Martin Amis just because she thought she should. But she's branched out, and is a happier person in the end. Good for Zadie. I would argue that reading Money or the latest J.T. Leroy may present a different tendency of masochism, but I got what she was saying.
She also spoke about the way writers read, and what she said makes sense for anyone who wants to create anything, that if you are paralyzed by your fear of either a) Not wanting to be as bad as the bad things you read, or b) are so intimidated by the good things that you think you won't ever compete, you'll never get anywhere. I guess these are obvious points, but for me it was comforting that someone who was so successful at such a young age had these anxieties...
Anyway, her new book (as described on The Believer's website) sounds like it will prove highly interesting. I'm curious how aesthetic failures will be presented as ethical failures -- I'm not sure I agree but I'm also not sure I understand. And in spite of her words in Central Park she still seems slightly caught up in the "shoulds" of reading and writing:
"My desk is covered with school work. I'm taking a class on Jane Austen and Henry James, and a class on literary theory. In between I'm writing a book of essays on the novel. The subtitle of the book is "Essays on Fiction and Failure"; the essays are concerned with the ethical impulse in fiction as I find it expressed in the 20th century novel. At the moment I'm working on the introduction and the first chapter. That's about E.M. Forster. Basically, the book is a very gentle exploration of a suggestion of Iris Murdoch's: That the literary impulse and the impulse towards the Good fail and succeed along similar lines. It's an old fashioned book in that way; it suggests that elements of a novel that we would describe as aesthetic failures are actually ethical failures also. Some of the other writers in the collection are Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Updike, Vonnegut, Salinger, Kingsley Amis, David Foster Wallace. And there's one poet in there as sort of epilogue—Philip Larkin. I made a decision to only work on the writers I love. There comes a point where it becomes exhausting to continue pretending that A Room With a View is not your favorite novel."
She spoke profusely about the immense and scary weight of the Western Literary Canon, for those who prioritize it over new or experimental fiction. She said that indeed, for a long time she would read Daniel DeFoe over Martin Amis just because she thought she should. But she's branched out, and is a happier person in the end. Good for Zadie. I would argue that reading Money or the latest J.T. Leroy may present a different tendency of masochism, but I got what she was saying.
She also spoke about the way writers read, and what she said makes sense for anyone who wants to create anything, that if you are paralyzed by your fear of either a) Not wanting to be as bad as the bad things you read, or b) are so intimidated by the good things that you think you won't ever compete, you'll never get anywhere. I guess these are obvious points, but for me it was comforting that someone who was so successful at such a young age had these anxieties...
Anyway, her new book (as described on The Believer's website) sounds like it will prove highly interesting. I'm curious how aesthetic failures will be presented as ethical failures -- I'm not sure I agree but I'm also not sure I understand. And in spite of her words in Central Park she still seems slightly caught up in the "shoulds" of reading and writing:
"My desk is covered with school work. I'm taking a class on Jane Austen and Henry James, and a class on literary theory. In between I'm writing a book of essays on the novel. The subtitle of the book is "Essays on Fiction and Failure"; the essays are concerned with the ethical impulse in fiction as I find it expressed in the 20th century novel. At the moment I'm working on the introduction and the first chapter. That's about E.M. Forster. Basically, the book is a very gentle exploration of a suggestion of Iris Murdoch's: That the literary impulse and the impulse towards the Good fail and succeed along similar lines. It's an old fashioned book in that way; it suggests that elements of a novel that we would describe as aesthetic failures are actually ethical failures also. Some of the other writers in the collection are Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, Updike, Vonnegut, Salinger, Kingsley Amis, David Foster Wallace. And there's one poet in there as sort of epilogue—Philip Larkin. I made a decision to only work on the writers I love. There comes a point where it becomes exhausting to continue pretending that A Room With a View is not your favorite novel."
miércoles, septiembre 24, 2003
I've always found Times Square to be caught in a vicious cycle of people going there because of the ads and the ads being there because of the people, but I just learned Jeremy Blake (of Beck's last album cover and Punch Drunk Love scene transitions) has an installation on the NBC gravitron in Times Square. I'm walking over tonight. Read more.
He's an interesting guy -- grew up in Washington D.C. as a child of hippies. His father was a crazy Studio 54 type who died of AIDS. Sometimes it seems like the most creative people are produced by growing up alienated from their environs... He's doing a gallery show in New York in October inspired by the diaries of Ossie Clark, a British fashion designer who dressed all our favorite rock stars until his boyfriend murdered him. What a world.
He's an interesting guy -- grew up in Washington D.C. as a child of hippies. His father was a crazy Studio 54 type who died of AIDS. Sometimes it seems like the most creative people are produced by growing up alienated from their environs... He's doing a gallery show in New York in October inspired by the diaries of Ossie Clark, a British fashion designer who dressed all our favorite rock stars until his boyfriend murdered him. What a world.
I thought I was going to see 13 year-olds doing whippits
Mistaking the time for the movie Thirteen, I said fuck it and went to see Demonlover, the new movie by Olivier Assayas. I thought it was going to be an Irma Vep-ish bore, but I was very wrong.
It's a bizarre combination of Irreversible, Dirty Pretty Things, 8MM and Lost in Translation (except instead of lying around in hotel rooms blankly staring at wierd Japanese talk shows the characters lie around watching wierd Japanese porn with all unmentionables scrambled by the Puritans who founded our fair nation, resulting in even more bizarre visual imagery). For those of you Brown MCMers who read Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" might as well have been the treatment for the script, and trust me she gets punished. Scopophilia is taken to the level of anime porn, except cartoon sex is reduced to a blob of moving squares. Where would America be without the MPAA?
Anyway, until the last five minutes I liked it a lot, and I hadn't heard anything about it. The clothes in the film are gorgeous, Sonic Youth does the soundtrack and it's really good, and the characters speak French, Japanese, Spanish and English. The scenes in Tokyo make me suspect Sophia Coppola saw something of this film before she started shooting Lost In Translation, which in comparison feels silly. Not that I don't prefer that sometimes. This movie made me scared and depressed. Because in the beginning I kind of related to the main character and then she gets fucked up in a gender-specific way, a narrative trope that always makes me upset. I think in the future I'll avoid movies about smut porn.
It's a bizarre combination of Irreversible, Dirty Pretty Things, 8MM and Lost in Translation (except instead of lying around in hotel rooms blankly staring at wierd Japanese talk shows the characters lie around watching wierd Japanese porn with all unmentionables scrambled by the Puritans who founded our fair nation, resulting in even more bizarre visual imagery). For those of you Brown MCMers who read Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" might as well have been the treatment for the script, and trust me she gets punished. Scopophilia is taken to the level of anime porn, except cartoon sex is reduced to a blob of moving squares. Where would America be without the MPAA?
Anyway, until the last five minutes I liked it a lot, and I hadn't heard anything about it. The clothes in the film are gorgeous, Sonic Youth does the soundtrack and it's really good, and the characters speak French, Japanese, Spanish and English. The scenes in Tokyo make me suspect Sophia Coppola saw something of this film before she started shooting Lost In Translation, which in comparison feels silly. Not that I don't prefer that sometimes. This movie made me scared and depressed. Because in the beginning I kind of related to the main character and then she gets fucked up in a gender-specific way, a narrative trope that always makes me upset. I think in the future I'll avoid movies about smut porn.
lunes, septiembre 22, 2003
lunes, septiembre 15, 2003
I haven't felt like writing much and there isn't much to offer up. I've been housesitting a luxurious brownstone for the summer, feeling rather entitiled because I occupy three stories and walk around in my underwear and pay no rent, and not only that but the place is meticulously swept and disinfected by a housekeeper once a week (who thinks I'm a slob and probably would like to disinfect me if she had half a chance).
Because the house is so clean I feel a certain satisfaction when the inevitable dirty spot is discovered. Under the television in a room of hospital-cornered beds and bauhaus sterility there are dust bunnies that tend toward a species of carnivorous jackrabbit. In the bathroom there is a small cork keeping the drain open whose backside has a small patch of mold. When it rains there is serious cockroach movement, particularly in the kitchen, such that I'm wary of turning on the light after a certain hour in the evening in fear of the ensuing scurry.
All of this will shortly be exchanged for a single room the size of a split atom, deep in the cancerous bowels of Brooklyn.
Because the house is so clean I feel a certain satisfaction when the inevitable dirty spot is discovered. Under the television in a room of hospital-cornered beds and bauhaus sterility there are dust bunnies that tend toward a species of carnivorous jackrabbit. In the bathroom there is a small cork keeping the drain open whose backside has a small patch of mold. When it rains there is serious cockroach movement, particularly in the kitchen, such that I'm wary of turning on the light after a certain hour in the evening in fear of the ensuing scurry.
All of this will shortly be exchanged for a single room the size of a split atom, deep in the cancerous bowels of Brooklyn.
viernes, septiembre 12, 2003
Just Because
The family across the street from me holds a really nice-looking shabbat dinner every week where the whole family is gathered around the table in their nicest starched and ironed and eat what looks like a very nice dinner off of very nice china. I was reheating some old lasagna and identifying with the Little Match Girl.
I've decided to tally the results of my summer reading now that summer's over into four categories. For some of you this may seem like a remedial high school summer reading list, but that's because you attended fancy private school and not Minneapolis South High:
1) Very Good
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, DF Wallace
Personal History, Katharine Graham
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy
Ada, or Ardor, Nabakov
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
Heart of Darkness, Conrad
Paradise Lost, Milton
American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis
2)Sort of Good But Not So Much
The Rachel Papers, Amis
Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, Salinger
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
3)Pretty Bad But Strong Effort
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
4)Wish I Had Finished to Assess Accurately
Mason & Dixon, Pynchon
I've decided to tally the results of my summer reading now that summer's over into four categories. For some of you this may seem like a remedial high school summer reading list, but that's because you attended fancy private school and not Minneapolis South High:
1) Very Good
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, DF Wallace
Personal History, Katharine Graham
The Death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy
Ada, or Ardor, Nabakov
The Sun Also Rises, Hemingway
Heart of Darkness, Conrad
Paradise Lost, Milton
American Psycho, Brett Easton Ellis
2)Sort of Good But Not So Much
The Rachel Papers, Amis
Raise High The Roof Beam, Carpenters, Salinger
Ways of Seeing, John Berger
3)Pretty Bad But Strong Effort
House of Leaves, Mark Danielewski
4)Wish I Had Finished to Assess Accurately
Mason & Dixon, Pynchon
jueves, septiembre 11, 2003
miércoles, septiembre 10, 2003
Finally
Lost In Translation is very good, made me very sad, very nostalgic, and did nothing for current moodiness but reflect it back to me. I'm so happy this movie exists, and that it simply couldn't be made by a man. Thank you Sofia.
She was there afterwords for a QandA -- she is very small and calm, and obviously had much better things to do than reflect in front of an audience consisting mostly of Conde Nast n'er do wells (including one fabulous woman in stripes who executed a fashion hybrid of Willy Wonka, Nefertiti and The Cat and the Hat with grave abandon). My take is that the film is autobiographical, I had a sinking feeling that Giovanni Ribisi was a stand in for her husband (Spike Jonze) but perhaps I'm reading too deeply.
Regardless, the mood of the film was almost destroyed by a cocktail party of well-heeled litterati (seriously -- my Asics were rather gauche at this affair) consuming noveau asian tidbits over wasabi peas, but the bar was open, so my senses were shut. Lovely.
She was there afterwords for a QandA -- she is very small and calm, and obviously had much better things to do than reflect in front of an audience consisting mostly of Conde Nast n'er do wells (including one fabulous woman in stripes who executed a fashion hybrid of Willy Wonka, Nefertiti and The Cat and the Hat with grave abandon). My take is that the film is autobiographical, I had a sinking feeling that Giovanni Ribisi was a stand in for her husband (Spike Jonze) but perhaps I'm reading too deeply.
Regardless, the mood of the film was almost destroyed by a cocktail party of well-heeled litterati (seriously -- my Asics were rather gauche at this affair) consuming noveau asian tidbits over wasabi peas, but the bar was open, so my senses were shut. Lovely.
A Mystery Revealed
In Japanimation movies, the shapeless, dumpling-like food that characters are inevitably pulling out of knapsacks, unwrapping and chewing accompanied by a satisfying sound effect of unknown origin has always perplexed and disturbed me. However, such foodstuffs have now been located in mid-town Manhattan.
Finally I've found a place in the neighborhood where there's no mention of quesadillas, baked manicotti or croutons rotting in large stainless steel basins. I prance over on my lunch break, dazed from too much time on the internet, and gleefully devour little rice balls stuffed with seaweed or pickles and an assortment of turnip-like tubers and tofu things in comforting broth. And they have ramen with pork a la Tampopo where you simultaneously utilize ladel and chopsticks to acheive a holistic consumption experience. The ladels are bamboo, of ingenious design.
Now, on the very same block, it looks like they are opening a take-out place that specializes in rice balls. This is very exciting, certainly the greatest incentive yet to not throw myself out the window of my workplace, falling a triumphant six inches to to the roof of the structure next door.
Finally I've found a place in the neighborhood where there's no mention of quesadillas, baked manicotti or croutons rotting in large stainless steel basins. I prance over on my lunch break, dazed from too much time on the internet, and gleefully devour little rice balls stuffed with seaweed or pickles and an assortment of turnip-like tubers and tofu things in comforting broth. And they have ramen with pork a la Tampopo where you simultaneously utilize ladel and chopsticks to acheive a holistic consumption experience. The ladels are bamboo, of ingenious design.
Now, on the very same block, it looks like they are opening a take-out place that specializes in rice balls. This is very exciting, certainly the greatest incentive yet to not throw myself out the window of my workplace, falling a triumphant six inches to to the roof of the structure next door.
domingo, septiembre 07, 2003
Harumph
Today I went to a lecture where one hipster asked Matthew Barney if he agreed with the assessment of his work as "sacred" and "profane." Barney answered profane, yes; sacred, no. There were some interesting haircuts there, whose extemporaneous peices of odd lengths screamed "pull me" but I was following advice to be more adult, mature-like, and I refrained.
viernes, septiembre 05, 2003
On the subject of envy... Who knew that Zelda Fitzgerald wrote? I just thought she was a magnificent socialite who tried her hand at ballet dancing and had affairs with parisian sailors. But she was a writer too, a jealous one at that. And she perished in a fire at an insane asylum. And I dressed up as her for halloween last year.
jueves, septiembre 04, 2003
I started work three days ago in a building that doubles as a tunnel. The thought of cars passing through the arches underneath me is the only affirmation that the minutes are, indeed, ticking by.
The building also serves as a vanishing point, such that if you were trying to draw a perspectival picture of Park Avenue looking downtown from, say, 90th street, it is from here that all lines emanate.
The current task at hand is to connect the negation of aphorisms to a certain brand of fast-food sandwich. The inspiration I've been told to be inspired by are two radiohead videos, that have apparently nothing to do with either sandwich or aphorism. In response, I have elaborated a scheme of laboratory testing, where the aphorisms serve as mere hypotheses to be proven wrong by various scenarios involving sandwich consumption.
But now I'm being told to come up with something more abstract.
The building also serves as a vanishing point, such that if you were trying to draw a perspectival picture of Park Avenue looking downtown from, say, 90th street, it is from here that all lines emanate.
The current task at hand is to connect the negation of aphorisms to a certain brand of fast-food sandwich. The inspiration I've been told to be inspired by are two radiohead videos, that have apparently nothing to do with either sandwich or aphorism. In response, I have elaborated a scheme of laboratory testing, where the aphorisms serve as mere hypotheses to be proven wrong by various scenarios involving sandwich consumption.
But now I'm being told to come up with something more abstract.
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