Song of the Day #02

Madonna's Confessions on a dancefloor album was one of the best to come out of 2005. Hard to imagine it was that long ago. Each track is impeccable; from Hung up to Like it or not. Every moment of this album reminds me of driving with my friend J.L. the first night we realized, contrary to previous opinion, that neither one of us was a total a-hole. Since then we've been like brothers. Like it or not crept up on me the other night. And when I listened to the lyrics, especially the lines I kept repeating over and over, it made a lot of sense. I'll leave the rest up to you.

Urban Safari #01

The necessity to mark your territory. Disposal, left over skins. Sketchie marker compass. Lost-and-found dot com. Books, video games, pens, iPod. Stolen to be discarded. Does this belong to you? On the sidewalk away from school. Take me home. Christmas present. A girl with a bloody nose. She's all grown up now.

Song of the Day #01

It's a gorgeous gray morning here in San Francisco. This noir atmosphere means almost anything can happen; like walking down Howard muttering Hail Marys to yourself.

I present to you 50 Foot Wave's "Sally Is A Girl" for your morning commute (if your at work or still dragging your mind to work). I was whistling/singing this all day yesterday. Enjoy.

Nagamuko = Rehab Cat

moar funny pictures

The Ballad of Willy & Liza: Issue 01

William Shatner

Fabulous. This documentary could be about Willy matching his dry cleaned socks and I would still watch it. And who knew he was 76 years old?! The web editor needs to be fired, those numbers are switched around and you know that’s true.

Liza Minnelli

"My mother invented the Rat Pack"

Get out your dictionaries and scribble a note, we have some things to clear up. Could you imagine what an incredible poker night this must have been? I would use up my time machine wish to go back and be a part this crew. Manhattans, pretzel sticks, and high stakes. Judy spinning records, having a smoke on the patio with Lauren, Sammy's antics and charm. Gorgeous.

Neologism: apparchitecture

San Francisco. Night. Not only is the city old but there’s a housing shortage and rent control. Residents aren’t moving as quickly and, with big money being snorted up SF’s nostrils, they’re also not being evicted. The nouveau riche stratum is stagnant, clogging the infrastructure of a breathing machine. Where there’s stagnation, there’s paranormal activity: think haunted houses, think silent woods, think cemeteries, think wardrobes.

Once upon a time on Folsom there was an elementary school. The municipality tore it down, rebuilt a new one across the street and turned the leveled site into a city park. There’s a basketball court, a mini community garden, a mound of grass where dogs play, a baseball field, and a playground with a sign that says “Adult must be accompanied by child.” The city’s jail and courthouse is the mountain range to its prairie.

Every morning I pass the park on my way to work. The space has a particular smell, one similar to toasting pop-tarts. It took me months to locate the origin; a nearby coffee roasting company.

One night, I was on the bus, a bus driving down Folsom and we passed the park. Standing, about 20’ tall, was a humanoid creature. It was completely still and had a glowing green Cyclops eye. Its skin was multicolored and, if I could see these shades in the dark, must have been exquisite by daylight. The eye was studying. The eye was absorbing. Its perspective on what it saw must have been something like time-lapse photography. It saw streams of white and red light, the frenetic blinking on and off of building lights, the path of the moon.

The bus drove on, out of its angle and sight.

The next morning the Cyclops figure was still there. It wasn’t an alien probe or being but a sculpture shelled with whole and broken colored vinyl. For me this statue falls under an interesting category of architecture: “Has that always been there?” Structures that exist but only become apparent, or seem to appear, during direct observation, often with an exclamation of surprise or disbelief.

Robyn: "Konichiwa Bitches"

DMI T-Shirt #001

Fog

Neologism: parapsychopharmacologist

parapsychopharmacologist - (2008) malapropism uttered by D.Morini - N. - 1. a licensed clinician who prescribes psychotropic drugs, based on doctor’s diagnosis, to ghosts, spirits, poltergeist and other entities from the beyond and studies the effects of said drugs.

And behold... the advent of nationwide ballot casting is upon the people. May the gods bestow upon the eligible the fortitude in making their right decisions. To have and to hold, to cherish and to comfort. To not find their ballot boxes thrown into the ocean, to not have votes casted by the deceased. To squirt some life into this piece, ya heard?

Here's a haiku:


Super Tuesday Haiku

Band of orange haze
tapes blue bay with smoky sky,
post blackened arrows.

No, but really. You should vote even if you're not sure for whom. You'll know. When you get there. You'll feel it. Feeling it yet? I felt it. It felt pretty damn good.

New Breed of Pig

In a pet store; overlooking puddles of newborn animals. They’re huddling little piglets, pink fur with dark brown and black spots. They squirm and warm-up against each other. They start like red mice babies and grow into their crucial period where their short and soft fur is as dirty pink as their skin.

“The babies are used for fur. They line jackets, purses, and gloves.” I was horrified. The pet store was a ranch, a breeding ground for these animals to use their skins as fabric. “Not only are they useful in the creation of couture but they are a delicacy among the Chinese youth.”

Outside, on the street, I saw two young girls in school uniform walk by gnawing on the open neck of one of these piglets. The heads are removed, their necks soft, juicy and sweet. Like an ice cream cone but for winter.

Challengers

Fe-Fi-Fo-Fum! I smerll der blud of an Engrishman. Whaddya know? If you haven't heard this album (or bloody own it) then you better well should. As a friends of mine told me in the strictest of confidence: "Don't worry about the state of the world. The New Pornographers!" and that's about it.

Highlights? The whole disc is special. Lately I listen to it on the shuttle bus when I'm clearing the heights of the oil-rich San Francisco Bay, gliding over the lubricated surface on a bridge about to come down. It's magic.

Buy it. The New Pornographers: "Challengers"

5.6

I skipped class last night. I had to. I’m in school for writing and I haven’t written anything meaty in weeks. Lately I’ve been oversaturated with the amount of reading I’m supposed to be keeping up with. So I skipped class, went home to write and rest.

I was in the kitchen, cutting up a baguette before it went stale to eat with hot salami and Manchego. I was slicing through the bread and I heard the Jesus fountain on the fridge shaking against the coffee maker. I thought to myself, Christ I must be really cutting this up pretty hard. Then I noticed the fridge itself shaking. I thought, what the hell is exploding or trying to come out of there? Then, from her bedroom, Erica exclaimed that it was an earthquake and that’s when I felt the floor tremble and the sound of everything around me rumbling against each other. We both made our way for the doorframes and waited. I felt dizzy, like vertigo.

The quake went on for a few more seconds after that, the dizziness didn’t subside right away. We were both excited to get the report on its magnitude and where it struck. KRON 4 interrupted the Dr. Phil broadcast of people with body dysmorphic disorders and spent the rest of the hour discussing the 5.6 tremble that happened 9 miles out of San Jose.

What I love about earthquakes is their unexpectedness; you never know when they’re coming. When they do, you don’t know how long they’ll last or where the epicenter was. We’ve felt stronger quakes in our apartment before but they had been so close (practically just below us).

This was the first one that was far away and yet we still felt it. Last night’s quake was also the strongest in the Bay Area for a while.

Michael? Who's Michael?

As I walked through Yurba Buena, past the Moscone Center, I heard three whistles come from behind me. Then, “Is that you, Michael?” was screamed at me by a woman. “Swinging your butt on the wrong side of the street?” I chose not to turn around. I don’t know anyone around here, especially who would be up at 7:30 in the morning. As traffic roared by the voice kept screaming and I realized that the person must be crazy.

I got to the light at 4th Street and waited. Then the woman came up from behind me saying something about how she doesn’t know who I am or knows that I don’t know who she is, talking to no one in particular. Ignoring walk signals, she made her way into the intersection, stopping a van. The driver said something to her and she turned back with a “Whore! Bitch!” and crossed 4th. I crossed and made a left, to avoid running into her again.

After a few blocks, on Folsom and 5th, she walked up to me. “Do you know where Bryant Street is?” she asked me. I asked her if it was up that way, closer to Market, unsure. She said no. I looked towards the freeway and said, “Oh yeah, it’s two block down that way.”

With her arms crossed, she thanked me and walked on.

Nagamuko is a Eunuch

A.G. let Nagamuko out. He left the screen door open. He’s living with us now, we forgot to tell him which cats can stay in and which can be put outside. We lived in a big, white farm house. It was evening and there were cats all over the lawn. The grass was slightly overgrown, lush and wet. Trees with Spanish moss, perhaps. I saw Nagamuko running with other cats like him, orange and striped. From a distance, I watched Noggi run and jump up at Andrew, swatting at his face. I went to chase him.

Noggi turned into a boy wearing khaki shorts and a khaki shirt. He looked like Prince Harry with his strawberry blonde hair, pale skin but in a Boy Scout uniform. I said, “I’m sure glad you changed into a human because now I can tell you why we have to keep you inside.”

He said, “What does ‘fixed’ mean?”

“Why are you fixed?” I asked.

“Yes, what does that mean?”

“It means your man-tubes have been cut off.”

Proof (2004)

Gwyneth Paltrow, Anthony Hopkins, Jake Gyllenhaal, Hope Davis
April 28, 2007



Another movie about tons of notebooks and the obsessive people that write in them. When I see movies that involve a character writing all the time in composition notebooks, “Seven” for instance, I immediately want to go out and buy a pile of them myself. From there I’ll write into retirement like a burning clipper ship on the horizon. There’s something very satisfying in those bound, almost square books that spiral notebooks can’t come close to. Also, being left handed, spiral notebooks are difficult to use without branding yourself with hieroglyphs of red, continuous dashes.

Are your friends and family really real? Can a cute guy with a PhD in Mathematics secretly have a crush on you, and stick around even during your craziest moments and still exist? Ask yourself these questions. A beautiful house. Books piled in the hallway. People without actual jobs. Working through a comfortable night. Even the crazies are well groomed with clear skin. I want an older sister to fly in like a mother hen and buy me a little black dress.

Too many facial close-ups. Why use widescreen when you’re going to fuzz out the background only to focus on the perfect, statuesque alignment of Gyllenhaal’s mouth or Davis’s hair? I can see all that on dlisted. If I worked on set design I would’ve wanted a full, actorless walk through of the house that Jack built in the Special Features section. Oh, and BTW, can Davis do any wrong? I’m right now in the kitchen, melting all the gold I’ve stolen over the years (watches, lockets, teeth) and constructing an award better than the Oscar. I’ll call it Betsy and it’ll be a hermaphrodite donkey standing inside a crystalline orchid. Betsy will stretch out on her tip-toes, extend out her arms. Held in her manicured hooves will be a revolving star that will measure barometric pressure and shed gold sparks when thunderstorms are approaching. I’ll give this statue to Hope Davis as thanks for being in “Proof.”

Dream Diary: The Last Train and Instant Rice

IMG_0549.JPG
Originally uploaded by Covet Canyon.

I was in an underground train station. This particular stop was similar in construction to 12th Street BART station (imagine a place slightly Escher) except orange, yellow and cream colored. Two men behind me were speaking Russian or some other Eastern European language. I decided to take the stairwell to the right which, I already knew, required me to duck a little. Why would they make this stairwell so short? You'd have to be 5'9" to pass comfortably, I thought to myself. I descended the stairs and went to duck but the slanted ceiling had gotten shorter. I had to put my bag down, lay on the ground, and slide on the tile to get into the stairwell. Making it down the stairs was just as tight. The passage became smaller. I could see the train tracks and I was pulling myself through the passageway. I was very thankful that the walls, ceiling and stairs had recently been polished which allowed me to not get stuck. At one point I wondered if I'd even fit and make it out the other end.

Once on the platform I decided to make instant rice. As I put the rice on, the final train arrived which I needed to take. I got in the final car, expecting there to be a box of rice (usually someone always leaves a box of instant rice behind on the final car of the last train) but there was none. I sat down and looked at the people around me. There was a guy sleeping in a bunker. He had taken this train all the way from New York and he was going to the University of Southern California, at least that's what his hat said. He had a bureau, an alarm clock, and a television. I wondered what that must be like, riding in the train across the country. What did he do all day? I knew he was on the final days of his journey that must've taken a week.

Outside the window I could see leaves and brush. The sun was shining bright and yellow. We were moving at a very slow pace. I could hear the rhythmic thudding of the train's wheels on the tracks.

At the Checkout

At the Checkout
Originally uploaded by smartsetpix.

80 Carolina parking lot, around five o’clock, cool and cloudy skies. My cousin Andrea walks from her car and into the building to work. “I didn’t know you’d work this late,” I said. Our desks were supermarket check-out stands. Our computers were where the cash register should’ve been. K. A. demonstrated how this new set-up was going to work.

Monday Morning, Riding The Bus

The page of the book I’m reading (Geraldine Kim: Povel) glows in a fragment of peach-light. I’m on a comfortable and smooth-riding bus and it’s seven-thirty in the morning. The top half and tips of the Port of Oakland crate movers are covered in thick and gray fog. Greens and Reds, coming mostly from the logos of metal shipping boxes and stop signs, are vibrant and alive. when I decide to stop reading a paragraph and look out the window I see that sunlight finds the cracks and crevices in the clouds. Ships and barges from this distance look like model toys. The sun’s light glows ominous. Itself is reflected in the bay’s water as if it were an omen, the approach of a boiling comet that’s specifically reaching for San Francisco; a city asleep in its own gray doldrums.