Sunday, October 26, 2003
there's a coldfront that's just moving into new orleans tonight. it's more than welcome, in fact i've been waiting for it all weekend, waiting for it to take away the muggy punch of summer that's still lingering here, just outside of every air-conditioned building. but now that it's here, now that there's a chill on the breeze and the humidity has resolved itself into a cool mist - now i have to deal with the emotional repercussions. autumn means so much, comes laden with so many feelings and memories. it's exciting, in one sense, and also deeply sad sometimes. and at its onset - now - it kind of swirls around me all those confusing feelings, the current hopes and the lost hopes of my past, and it puts a knot in my throat, and i shiver, maybe just a little more than the cooling temperatures might otherwise require... Tuesday, October 21, 2003
arrgh! i'm just getting over a cold, haven't been able to kick it completely, and now all of a sudden yesterday i get this killer headache. dizziness. pressure behind my right eye. stiffness in my upper right jaw. painkillers aren't helping much. last night it hurt so much i was thinking it was some kind of crawling tumor that was going to give me supernatural powers like john travolta in that movie. now i'm pretty satisfied with the fact that it's just a massive sinus infection - and i've got a doctor's appointment after lunch. so i'm in the just-waiting-around-with-my-pain phase, and it's no fun. what has been fun, though, is all the music i've been able to go see lately. more on that in a second... Saturday, October 11, 2003
this weekend, i am have a cold. i think colds are the great equalizer - they lower everyone to the same miserable lowest common denominator. you can't buy, muscle, or think your way out of one. kind of humbling, especially when all you want to do is lay in bed and blow your nose and cough... fortunately, with the help of way too many decongestants and a whole lot of cough drops, i've managed to get myself mobile enough to get in a couple of movies, namely quentin tarantino's kill bill and, thanks to the currently running new orleans film festival, cremaster 3. kill bill was every bit what i've been wanting to see from QT for the past eight or so years - comfortingly violent in a schloky, monty python kind of way - and i'm looking forward to the second installment in february. cremaster 3, if you've never heard of the cremaster series, is the weird invention of matthew barney, who also happens to be bjork's most recent babydaddy. it is by far the most intentionally strange fever dream of a movie i have ever experienced; there's almost no way to describe or explain it. it deals with, to various extents, gaelic mythology, the chrysler building, freemasonry, guinness, teeth, the band agnostic front, an incredible amount of gooey white gloop, and a lot of other very odd things. and it's so long it has an intermisson. it's definitely self-consiously, even pretentiously, an 'art' piece - much of the second half takes place in the guggenheim musem, making it overtly a kind of filmic performance piece. i think everyone who goes to see it is expecting it to be that way, and so you kind of keep that in mind throughout, and it's okay. very strange, and the decongestants maybe amplified that a bit, even. after finding the website for the entire cremaster series, and reading all the synopses, it seems there's apparently plenty of method to barney's madness - but it's still madness. which make him one hell of an artist. right? i'm going back to bed. Tuesday, October 07, 2003
i'm at work, and feeling caffeine-electric today - which is weird because coffee usually doesn't affect me like this. this morning's iced mocha did seem awfully strong, though... lots to do though, so the extra energy should be well spent - and i've got the new belle and sebastian to rock out to - and for once, they've made a rock-outable album. fun. Sunday, October 05, 2003
saturday morning i went to elizabeth's restaurant in the bywater for brunch with simeon (who was back from NYC for the week to visit his parents in thibodeaux). great brunch, no surprises there. but elizabeth's is on chartres street, which runs along the river levee, and which has at that point been completely torn up to be re-paved. the whole street looks like a construction site, and they've trucked in tons of sand and construction materials. it's a mess. well, you can probably see what's coming - we backtracked a few blocks after leaving the restaurant, and as we turned to get back onto a side street, my mountaineer got stuck in the sand, about half way up the tires. initial attempts to dig the tires out only made things worse. looked like time to call triple-a and hope simeon didn't miss his flight, which was leaving only a few hours later. this is where it gets wierd. you have to understand that this particular area of the bywater neighborhood (a good mix of artsy and derelict) is a bit deserted, especially with its main thouroughfare completely impassable. additionally, there's not much around there but abandoned, half-wrecked-out warehouses - great for photography but not much else. within a minute of our getting stuck, a black land rover pulls up near the end of the sidestreet we were turning onto - only a few feet away. three people get out - two guys and a girl, complete strangers to me, ostensibly in their early thirties, and in every respect who you'd expect for the area - mid to upscale bohemian looking. she was petite, and wore a white t-shirt and denim overalls; the guys in sandals, cargo shorts, thick glasses, etc... i guess they were looking for something to photograph (though i didn't particularly notice a camera), but they fairly immediately noticed we were stuck, and asked if they could help. really, they just kind of started helping. the girl asked if we had a chain, so she could tow us out; i didn't. so she suggested we use the dusty old firehose which was conveniently coiled on the curb a few feet from the car, looked under the car, found that we could tie it around my right front strut (which i did); the other guys and simeon found several conveniently large wooden planks to brace the tires; they tied the hose to the landrover, and with a bit of a shudder and a jolt, we were on solid pavement. all of this within ten minutes, when it could have been - by all rights should have been - a several hour ordeal. though it was a warm afternoon, we hardly had time to sweat. we got out to thank them and untangle ourselves from the firehose; i thanked them all profusely, gave the girl a spontaneous hug for saving my day, shook the guys hands, and we all climbed back into our respective cars and drove off. no names were exchanged, which i realized and regretted only a few seconds later, but it was too late. i wish i had at least offered to buy them drinks, or something, and i can't explain why i didn't... nor can i explain the sudden appearance of three people, on a deserted street, who appeared to have very little purpose there except to help me out of my predicament. nor can i explain the odd happenstance of a conveniently placed firehose capable of towing a truck, and on an urban street, of such a plentitude of planks. draw your own conclusions - luck, coincidence, divine intervention, a little of each, i don't know. my mom is big on guardian angels and such, and although i'm no fan of roma downey, della reese or michael landon, i have to say the thought did occur to me that i might have given mine a hug that morning. Saturday, October 04, 2003
children's book author william steig died yesterday, at the pleasantly late age of ninety-four, of pleasantly benign "natural causes", presumably meaning old age. it seems that he's best known now for being the author of shrek; but he's still best known to me for being the author of "amos and boris" and "doctor desoto" - a book about a mouse who's a dentist - which were some of my favorite books as a child.
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