The World, From My Front Porch Last Night -- Shortly Prior to Dog Walk

I'm Sorry, Don't Snow

Don't know who drew this picture. I found it on the internet by typing "snow". I think it's beautiful. Click on it, make it bigger. It's a bit disturbing how the internet gives everyone access to everything. It's snowing hard here, and i'm feeling kinda like that girl. I feel needy and hopeless. Like I need something, besides friends, family, and dog (I'm whiny, cuz I'm completely blessed in those files), to care about. Something I want to work hard on. I want to do it for real, not on a computer. I know I'll probably end up on one at some point, but fuck computers. You're reading this on a computer, and you're probably responding to it as if it were written by a computer. Close. I close em and think about spring and not being at work
and feeling perfectly happy sitting alone with nothing to do.

Movie Night 2-21-07

Big night, last. Ladies and Gentlemen were lucky enough to see the satanic Performance from 1970. Long time, folks, this little evil drop has been unavailable. Not many have seen it, but now you can, cuz it's on DVD. I would say yes, but be careful, little ones. It's a dark spot, no doubt.
It's a pretty good movie. Not great at all, but definitely interesting, and psycho. Actual hippie sex. So they say. It wasn't that awesome. I mean it would be awesome in the real, but in the movie it wasn't. I think Jagger was pretty cool in this. I didn't think he would be. He played Come On In My Kitchen very nicely.

Cargo

A few Criterion dvd's that i may have to go deeper in debt for:



This is a rerelease, but doesn't it look nice?






That one is pretty neat too.

Thirdly

I finally finished The Third Man. I was really impressed with The Fallen Idol last year, so I decided I'd better see Carol Reed and Graham Greene's follow-up The Third Man. It also has a very famous star part for Orson Welles who spends all of ten minutes on screen. Like Fallen Idol, it's got some interesting themes, mostly about the uncertain state of individual morality. Greene seems to have been a bit preoccupied with themes of loyalty and betrayal in this period. Perhaps these are motifs running through much of Greene's work, I've not read it. These preoccupations run pretty deep in The Third Man and I've found myself discovering new meaning in my memory of the details, days after viewing it. Another thing: I can't help but think my ignorance of WWII contributes to my sense of missing something here. The screenwriter and director are both british; the leading man and the guiding plot force are American; the setting is Vienna, in a strange period of divided occupation, and chaotic law enforcement. It's a pretty loaded setup, ripe for allegory, and while I think I get the gist of the thing, audiences a generation ago probably understood its intricacies a bit better. There is a great awareness in the film of the devastated state of post-war Vienna, and this Vienna is certainly a symbol of something.
Welles is pretty cool, especially delivering this line:

``You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love--they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.''

I've read that this dialogue was written by Welles and not Greene. Interesting, as it's probably the film's most famous line. The music is also very famous, and it's awesome. Just a man playing an instrument called a zither. You'll recognize it when you hear it.
I don't know if it's better than The Fallen Idol, but they go together very well. Watch them both and you'll have some things to keep you thinking for a while. I don't think many of Reed's films are available on DVD yet, but I'd like to see a few of them, so please release them.

Against my better judgement, we had snow this smorning (in 2nd grade I won my first literary award for a christmas story called The Lost Reindeer. I can't remember anything about it, except my embarrassment at having to be told "smorning" is not a real word). I did not ask for this fucking underline, btw. This evening however was pretty warm, so B and I took a long Avant Rock Dog Walk. We chose Tago Mago by Can. Walked some new streets. Found a park: pretty nice, not far from my house. There was a really nice monument out front that I thought at first was a tombstone. It was dedicated to "the first black college graduate in Utah." I can't remember his name, which means I will not forget a notebook next time. I love taking long walks at night with crazy music. It helps make my city seem interesting and weird again. I didn't talk to anyone this walk, but I heard a woman calling her husband many bad things, didn't look at her cuz she seemed pretty angry. B was pretty good, but too hungry, which is weird, cuz I fed her dinner just before we left. Hmm? I'm gonna try to do an Avant Rock Dog Walk post every once in a while. Just wander and then ramble. Don't I have anything better to do? No. I'll choose some strange album I've been reading about or whatever, from whenever, hopefully usually something new. Something I might not listen to normally. The kind of music that requires more attention than I usually am willing to give. I'm going to have to get some new headphones. I want good ones. Anyone know good headphones? I will also take suggestions for listening material. Lets see the comments page explode! Damn. Sorry I know this hyperlink shit is annoying. Wordpress? Typepad?

STATS
Time Elapsed: 40 min.
Songs Heard: 5
Favorite Track (tonight): Halleluhwah
Pieces of Garbage Eaten by B: 2 for sure
Landmarks: Park on 600 S.; Monument to first black college grad
Notes: Must obtain -- Notepad; Headphones

Communism, Anarchism, Nihilism

I've been thinking about the band CAN a lot lately. I've noticed lots of bands are releasing albums that sound like them, and I think thats pretty cool. In fact, if I were talented enough and had weird enough talented buddies, I'd start a band that sounded a little bit like CAN. I've heard most of their albums, first four at least, and I love them. My favorites are Ege Bamyasi and Tago Mago. These seem to be the consensus faves. If you've not heard these two albums, I promise, after a few listens, you will love them.
The first album, Monster Movie, is pretty great too. It has an American singer (Damo Suzuki is the vocalist on the later albums) who apparently had to quit the band because they were bad for his mental health. Yoo Doo Right is the most famous song on Monster Movie, and it's neat. Reminds me of Velvet Underground.
I'm not sure that there is any truth to the name being an acronym. Wiki says it's a backronym. Probably.

Harry

Here's something that looks pretty cool. Can't vouch for it, cuz I haven't seen it yet, but it's a docu about Harry Nilsson during the making of Son of Schmilsson. This links to the first part in the 5 or 6 part film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cefnRiGfSZ0

Cool Free Listening... Maybe

I just found a link on digg.com to this site:
http://www.oculture.com/weblog/2007/02/the_major_works.html
It has a bunch of mp3's of H.G. Wells books, but the one that caught my interest is a free download of the original Orson Welles, Mercury theatre radio production of War of the Worlds. Took about three minutes to download. I've never heard this, so I'm pretty excited to put this on the sansa sandisk mp3 player (it's a little clunky). Check it out, if you're interested.

Dark Spots

Movie Night 2/7/07
Dollar movie. The Fountain. This crazy freak of a movie really surprised me. It was pretty darn cool. Happy/Sad love story with a Buddhist conquistador. About dealing with grief. I think. And somehow living forever. This Aronofsky seems like a really interesting fella. I hear Brad Pitt begged Aronofsky to put him in his next movie. Here's hoping it doesn't happen. The Fountain joins the list of good movies from last year. Short list. It's a pretentious movie, no doubt. Rachel Weisz is pretty, but I don't think she can really act, just smile.

Co-op
I've been wanting to post about the food co-op for a while. K and I have now been a part of this community food buying project for two months, and we think it's pretty awesome. Actually, I don't know why you're not doing it (if you live in SLC). The co-op website has all the info you need. You get lots of good food for about half the price of the grocery store. This month we got tilapia fish, pork chops, chicken, potatoes, grapefruit, pears, a loaf of good bread, bean soup, lots of stuff. If you're a solo, you can order just a half share. Part of the deal is that you commit to two hours community service per month. If you're interested you can volunteer with J and I to help with the food deliveries. It's not bad at all. Makes you feel like a good commie.

Rock and Roll. We are from Japan!

It's been a while since I've posted. Frantic days. Dentist. (I fucking hate dentists. Crooks, man.) I thought I'd write about some of the new music I've had piling up on my computer. Lots of good stuff lately, actually.

My very favorite thing of the moment is this new album by the Japanese band Boris. It's called Rainbow and it's co-credited to the Ghost guitarist Michio Kurihara. His guitar playing is really the element that keeps knocking me out. He plays with several styles throughout, sometimes layered atmospherics, sometimes barely appropriate freak-outs, but it's always interesting. Boris mostly play it straight, sort of timidly waiting Kurihara's screech, but the music isn't filler.



Kurihara's real job, Ghost, released some product recently too. In Stormy Nights sounds pretty good so far, but hasn't had the immediate effect of Rainbow or the previous Ghost album. The album is built around a half hour long noise piece that just doesn't work that well. The song songs are pretty solid, though.