Movie Millisecond: You can’t live alone

Masculin Féminin (Jean-Luc Godard, 1966).

You really can’t live alone.

Thanks for two million unique hits on this journal in its almost two years of operation. Come for the porn, stay for the shenanigans! Comment any ol’ time. You do not know how much I enjoy it.

As this is not a for-profit blog, every person who visits really does matter to me. It began as a way to force myself to write, and to subject myself to the excruciating experience I’d spent my life trying to shun, sharing myself with other people. When I shied away, I thought that I’d change focus and the journal evolved in to a sort of annotated public scrapbook, a way to share the things that matter to me with other people.

Source help wanted.

But you know, I’ve been thinking about it, and it’s really the same thing. Maybe I don’t have the courage to always talk about myself, and I instead sublimate that desire to share, that impulse to connect, into a post about a former Playmate or a digression on the mythic overtones of a poem by E.E. Cummings. But I am still sharing myself, still saying, “This is me, and this is what I am about. I’m telling you something personal.” Because the things that matter to us almost entirely comprise who we are. When you visit, and link, and comment, it ratifies my sense that I’m not alone in this universe.

If you want to introduce yourself, ask questions, or share ideas, do it, and thank you again. Here’s to two million more of us agreeing that some of the detritus we encounter in this thing called life can be pretty all right — even meaningful.

I truly appreciate the company.

Take-two Tuesday and Yesterday’s News — Movie Moment: Une femme est une femme, Zodiac quackery and cock-gobbling Virgos edition

edit: Since this post’s original appearance, I’ve been reclassified as a Leo by … the sometimes-I-tune-in Zodiac powers that be? Not actually sure whom. Fellow fabulously-damaged Virgin Panda tried to explain it to me over soosh bombasticos last week but she is much, much better at understanding this stuff than I am.

This post originally appeared on February 7, 2010 at 9:14 a.m., so practically one year ago. Synchronicity in Yesterday’s News!

Romance, science, and zodiac quackery in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is A Woman (Godard, 1961).

Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr. Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day.

The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac — never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac.

And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.

The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them.

Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutiae like Rainman [and] have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion.

Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Ritchie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.

[personally adding Anne Bancroft, Evan Rachel Wood, Lauren Bacall, Ricki Lake, Greta Garbo, and Rose McGowan to that list].

Yes, that is pretty much the way of it.

Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.

Insightful and amusing zodiac sign analysis by Carly, whose blog “Do you think I’m smart? Astrology and other Ass Munchery” is right here on the wordpress. Usually I say that I don’t believe in all that large astrological nonsense, but I have to admit that’s the first one I’ve ever read that was right on. Maybe I just needed to read all the horrible things I already know about myself confirmed, instead of the butt-licking backhanded compliments in most horoscopes, in order to start giving it some credence.

Final thought.

How to Spot a Virgo Woman:

They have an eating disorder.

They give rigorous handies.

They have acid reflux.

They’ll do “anything for my man.”

They want your love, but don’t deserve it.

(more, if you’re into that — she is very clever and scathingly funny)

Movie Millisecond: Moebius strip of misery

À bout de souffle / Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, 1960.)

E.E. Cummings Month: “i like my body when it is with your”

I’ve had a lot of friends celebrating romantic occasions recently. This is for them, and for hope.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry, 2004).

i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,

i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new


(E.E. Cummings, “i like my body when it is with your.” Written for Elaine Thayer. They divorced in December of 1924. The poem was published Valentine’s Day, 1925.)

Jean Seberg, À bout de souffle/Breathless (Godard, 1960).

If you feel often like me then these Cummings love poems might make us lost ones a little lonely, but if I can glean a positive from it, they are written with such passion that you cannot help, with some surprise, hoping to find a fraction of that abandon and joy, whether again or for the first time. And believing such a thing is possible to find even after you’ve experienecd deep pain or felt yourself set always apart from the crowd of the easily popular, incomprehensible, “normal” socializing world, the idea that you might still connect with someone in a deep, resonantly real way, one that isn’t predicated on current conventions of date-marking-success like alcohol or knowing lines from an eighties sitcom, is something that is never bad. I think too that stripping away all the trappings that surround a date or relationship, and seeing how well the vibe between you stands up absent of distraction, mood-altering substances, and the intervention of entertainment technology is maybe a good idea, too.

Katharine Hepburn, Woman of the Year (George Stevens, 1942).

Maybe it’s even vital and something you should do right out of the gate instead of triking along together parallel-playing in front of the television at being in touch when really you are still little materialistic children faking love for someone else in a thousand ways while you prevent yourself from really loving anyone by putting up these walls of text messages and reality shows you have to watch and social networking and earbuds and booze and — hey-hey-hey — blogging. We make ourselves alone even when we’re together, and then we can’t understand why we can’t form connections… I am totally depressing myself. This was supposed to be about hope and it still is. Maybe I’m just whittling away the non-reality of all the malarkey that’s kept my hope from fulfillment in the past.

Railing against my own stupidity — misguided Bookfoolery and forcible rejection

I did a stupid thing and decided to skip The Tommyknockers. Instead, I read L.A. Confidential, then Red Harvest, then some subpar book from Jeffery Deaver that was a bit afield from what I usually expect of him.

Image via thegunnshow right here on the wordpress. Girls Like a Boy Who Reads. My cover looks exactly like that but I do not look exactly like him. Check the blog out.

He spells it Jeffery and not Jeffrey, but that is not today’s issue. Also I am mad at him for getting tired of his Lincoln Rhyme characters (you may remember their portrayals by Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie in the film adaptation of The Bone Collector) and moving to this boring woman in Monterey as his new detective, but there was a preview in the back for a new Lincoln Rhyme so he is sort-of back in my good graces. Jury is out: he better not do anything stupid like kill off Lincoln or his hot redheaded girlfriend Amelia. That is still not today’s issue.

Today’s issue is that I skipped The Tommyknockers which I always read over the Fourth of July in order for maximum synchronicity and a karmically blessed Summer, and I thought I’d try something different and not be a slave to superstition, but I think I got a little overly cocky. Right away bad things started happening.

And it’s obviously all because I did not read The Tommyknockers and the blame for this situation can be laid only at the door of that fact and has nothing to do with my own behaviors and weaknesses. (eye roll)

Now instead I’ve read the Gentleman’s generous loan of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and I’m about to make a date with Milo for us to simultaneously begin Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

Pictures come from Une femme est une femme and allthatsinteresting on the tumblr.

This just in.

Correction notice: On 3/14/10, I implied that I controlled the events of my life. I regret this error. Correction — I do not control the events of my life.

Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).

Even at all. I don’t control them and I absolutely cannot predict them.

Things are going badly for the o.g.b.d. with his split, and I think it is taking its toll because he said some unusual things to me that came from left field for me. But this is a terribly difficult time for him and I understand that everything must be examined through that filter, because it is just simply one of the most difficult times of your life to be newly separated from your spouse. I went through the same things.

Une femme est une femme (Godard, 1961).

I am not going to let him struggle alone. I have this opportunity to be there for him, and I am just going to be as understanding as I can be and take as much time as is needed to help him through this. He’s my kiddo’s father and we’re a team.

Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).

I had a good time with him at the movie yesterday, but I think he has a lot going on right now and it’s difficult for him to work through. Some financial stuff, too, the end result of some ugly back-and-forth with his wife which was really terrible to be present for his finding out about because there was literally nothing I could do to help; ditto his sorrow at seeing less of his son, which has to be horrible. He calls him “Mr. Cheeks.” I really pray that he and his wife can work things out because I can tell it’s killing him not to get to spend as much time with his son as he was accustomed to.

I still think his wife will come around, I don’t believe people can sustain bad feelings forever, especially not someone who seems as essentially nice as her. I think she may have deleted me as an imaginary friend on the myspace, but if I worried what happened on social networking sites, I’d never have any peace. Those aren’t real gestures, not with any deep meaning or permanence. I still can’t see this going so badly forever. I mean, it is almost impossible, isn’t it? Look what happened between me and him, for example. We did hurtful things to one another, said unspeakable things to each other (I finally got to apologize for calling him “human garbage,” which has literally haunted my heart for years, and I’m so happy about that) but in the end we have made it up and now things are great.

Une femme est une femme (Godard, 1961).

Well, pretty great, that is. Some weirdness. There are some things I don’t understand, but I will figure them out. All that all is almost as an aside. Yesterday’s news and mainly things I’m filing away to think about so I can give them their proper due consideration at a better time and with an open mind and untroubled heart.

Grandma at Panda Eraser’s hair show last Friday.

What’s bad today is that my grandmother is having a Bad Day. It started at 3:00 a.m. when I startled awake to find her bent over me, shaking me by the shoulder while she clenched and unclenched her other hand. “E—,” she said urgently, “I’m flat broke. I can’t think where my checkbook’s got to but I don’t know how to get home! Am I going to fly? You have to call them. I don’t want them to know I don’t have any money. [never did figure out if ‘them’ was the airline or her bank or what] You’ll arrange it, won’t you?” I calmed her down and told her of course, got water for her and lead her back to her room.

From “Pulp,” by Neil Krug.

Then it just repeated about two to three times an hour ’til I finally woke my mother and said, “Your turn.” I was feeling drained and uneasy about some of the events of the day before and I just needed to rest. I feel selfish, looking back on it, but I was at a breaking point. It had repeated itself, the conversation, to the point of exhaustion. Both of us were near tears and I figured the perspective of someone better-rested (ie: my mother) might put a fresh and more positive spin on things.

via

But the whole thing just set the stage for the day. It’s a pacey and fearful kind of day. Things are preying on her mind today, over and over. She can’t relax, and she keeps cyclically freaking out and confiding the same fears again and again. There’s nothing I can say or do that comforts her for more than twenty minutes at a time. It’s heartbreaking. I think the trigger was that fuckall hellpit altar of commerce the mall, which if I had been around, I might’ve tried to intervene, but I wasn’t, I was out with the o.g.b.d. My mother reported to me that yesterday while I was gone, they’d taken my grandmother to the mall to pose for pictures with my kidlet (I’d approved this mission), but then afterward they actually drug my grandmother around that godawful anthill of capitalism, and not surprisingly she hated it.

Valley of the Dolls (Robson, 1967.)

She did not like the number of people in weekend crowds one bit: it understandably scared and confused her to have that much crap coursing all around her. Mom said she also didn’t like how large the stores were and kept asking why they were so big.

Delicatessen (Caro, Jeunet, 1991).

I’ve taken Dorothy to the mall several times and we’ve been just fine walking around just after it opens of a weekday morning, stopping and getting lemonade, and mainly using it as a very large indoor track with window displays, but in all honesty I’m not fond of visiting the mall for its intended purpose with my mother anymore than my grandmother was. My mother likes to shop, which I hate. She has to look at every single thing, the minutiae of which bores and vaguely frightens me. I skim at best, if I even enter a shop at all rather than simply scan their storefront as I walk past. The marathon philosophy with which my mother takes herself to the mall is some kind of crazy, gritty, kamikaze combination of let’s-pretend-we’re-so-girly phony ego trip and a chillingly toneless, flinty determination to get a bargain no matter what the physical or emotional price.

Natalie Wood in what I believe is a still from the underrated noir Daddy Issues extravaganza A Cry In the Night (Tuttle, 1956), in which very young Natalie plays Elizabeth, the daughter of an overprotective and repressive police captain who is kidnapped from her makeout session with her boyfriend by dangerous young voyeur Raymond Burr. Out of the frying pan, in to the fire, kiddo.

Both of those qualities freak me out to no end, like actually boggle my mind and scare me. It becomes a nightmare, with me feeling more and more hemmed in by the crowds and infuriated by the abundance of meaningless shit all around to buy, buy, buy — all the advertisements, the people dressed identically so you start to feel like you cannot even tell which are the mannequins. Ugh. It starts making me want to burn the whole place down. That’s not hyperbole: I literally want to watch it all burn.

Pierrot le fou (Godard, 1965).

Gar. Positive straw at which I’m grasping: I guess I may not control the events of my life but I can at least control my reactions. Staying as positive and peaceful as possible so that I don’t get overemotional and fuck things up. That’s what I’ll focus on for today.

That went well.

Just came from lunch with the o.g.b.d. No repeat of the well-understandable bottle thing of the last visit. I told you it would work out! Kidlet took ill halfway through our mutual lunchtime and demanded to be taken home. While swinging the o.g.b.d. back home after dropping her past the house, the o.g.b.d and I stopped off for “a coffee,” which is a trite phrase that in this case means “a pint.” (Now you are speaking our language.)

We came clean about a lot of sadness through which we’ve both been paddling, essentially rudderless, and, I think at any rate, ultimately the topics upon which we touched in our rambling but wonderfully amicable chat basically agreed with the age-old saying that is one of the ones I have always loved best. “Seek the headwaters of the river of pain.”

I think that we discovered that for both of us we are for one other indeedy some of the chief of those there ol’ headwaters. And we are forgiving each other first, ourselves second, and figuring the godforsaken rapids of the fallout out together, in the best and most platonic of ways. Absent of the prospect of sex and the agony of romantic entanglement, it turned out we had all manner of wisdom and laughs to offer one another. It was an amazing talk. I have great hopes for the future. Thanks for the vibes!

I’m packing now and gearing up to scootch down to C-town to have a gal night with Miss D and the LBC (I travel armed with Mean Girls, Josie and the Pussycats, and Anchorman — my go-to feel-good flicks) and then in the a.m. we are driving to Famoso for the last day of the drag races to ring in Gorgeous George’s 30th with Geo, Paolo, and the Gentleman.

I am feeling really upbeat and positive about the future. Always room for another friend in the circle, even in the most unlikely of circumstances. I am really excited to welcome someone back in to my life that I cared deeply about. So thanks again, and catch you on the flip!

Movie Moment: Une femme est une femme, Zodiac quackery and cock-gobbling Virgos edition

Romance, science, and zodiac quackery in Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is A Woman (Godard, 1961).

Virgo is a hard worker, a neglected mother, a quotidian task master, and a selfless martyr. Virgo is also a reality TV train wreck, a drunken psychopath, and a self-abusing anorexic. Virgo is analytical on a good day. Virgo is self-critical, self-loathing, self-deprecating, self-flagellating, and self-defeating on a bad day.

The Virgin, contrary to what her title may suggest, is the resident cock gobbler of the zodiac — never a topper, always a bottom. If you’re looking for a woman who will abuse herself, party like it’s Greek harvest time and she’s drunk on mead, please you sexually without so much as a nod to her own hungry genitalia, and perform all the humiliating duties you’ve assigned to her as wife and mother, look no further than the drunken Virgin of the zodiac.

And yes, more often than not, this naughty little maiden is getting crunked at the club or downing daiquiris at the Mommy and Me block party, an attempt to drown to death the echoes of self-loathing that usually prevent her from embodying the female charm and charisma she labors to possess.

The Virgo vibratory pattern is restrictive, effective, judgmental, exact, helpful, and neurotic. Virgos are a lot of things, socially charismatic not being one of them.

Usually, when I meet a Virgo, my natural reaction is, ‘this person must have Aspergers.’ They fixate on minutiae like Rainman [and] have more clicks and ticks than a malfunctioning android attempting to process human emotion.

Virgos rule the house of diet, perfectionism, and nourishment. Just glance at a list of famous Virgos and you’ll find more self-flagellating, adulthood suppressing skeletors than you can shake a stick at: Amy Winehouse, Rachel Zoe, Nicole Ritchie, Karl Lagerfeld, Twiggy, Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Peggy Guggenheim, etc.

[personally adding Anne Bancroft, Evan Rachel Wood, Lauren Bacall, Ricki Lake, Greta Garbo, and Rose McGowan to that list].

Yes, that is pretty much the way of it.

Virgo is the embodiment of human turmoil.

Insightful and amusing zodiac sign analysis by Carly, whose blog “Do you think I’m smart? Astrology and other Ass Munchery” is right here on the wordpress. Usually I say that I don’t believe in all that large astrological nonsense, but I have to admit that’s the first one I’ve ever read that was right on. Maybe I just needed to read all the horrible things I already know about myself confirmed, instead of the butt-licking backhanded compliments in most horoscopes, in order to start giving it some credence.

Final thought.

How to Spot a Virgo Woman:

They have an eating disorder.

They give rigorous handies.

They have acid reflux.

They’ll do “anything for my man.”

They want your love, but don’t deserve it.

(more, if you’re into that — she is very clever and scathingly funny)

Advice: Wordy words of wisdom from Jean-Luc Godard that could be construed as pretentious horseshit, I suppose, depending on your outlook but I like them, featuring Anna Karina (slightly NSFW)

Quotes from Godard illustrated by his wife and early muse, my own style inspiration and personal patron saint, the lovely and talented* Anna Karina.

*Not sure if you’d noticed, but I only bill as “lovely and talented” those who take it off. Write that down.

All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun. (Journal entry, 5/16/91)

“Light me up!” Still of Anna Karina as Natacha van Braun from Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution / Alphaville (1965)

I don’t think you should feel about a movie. You should feel about a woman. You can’t kiss a movie.

Still with Jean-Paul Belmondo from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961), previously highlighted with “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” still here back in September.

“In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and ‘get’ everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don’t understand each atom of the potato!” (Interview with David Sherritt, The Christian Science Monitor, 8/3/94)

Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961)

Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self. (Critique called “What Is Cinema?” for Les Amis du Cinéma , 10/1/52, a work which advanced the auteur theory but also kind of ripped off Bazin, which is weird cause Bazin would’ve read it and was a big influence on Godard but this was done contemporaneously of Bazin himself working on something titled this, about this, so maybe the quote is misattributed? … or maybe there is more to it than I know with my tiny ken of French movie guys, maybe it was a done thing to borrow titles from one another, or perhaps it was a continuation of a dialogue they were already having both in person and via publications, or, finally, it could even have been an “understood” question which anyone might use as the title of a book or article … I am probably over-reading it.)

Hands down my favorite picture of Anna Karina

Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion. (“Defense and Illustration of Classical Construction,” Cahiers du Cinéma, 9/15/52)

Cover or liner art for her album, a collaboration with the dread Serge G

The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea. (“Strangers on a Train,” Cahiers du Cinéma 3/10/52 — Godard wrote extensively and insightfully in his early career about the movies of Hitchcock, one of my favorite and I think misunderstood directors; I’ll try to share some good nuggets from time to time)

Anna cahorts about topless as Anne in 1968’s The Magus, also starring Anthony Quinn (Zorba the Greek), Michael Caine, and Candace Bergen (Murphy Brown) — no one seems to like this movie but me. That’s okay, because I like it a lot.

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second. (Le petit soldad / The Little Soldier, 1963.)

With Jean-Paul Belmondo again, this time as Ferdinand and Marianne in the sort of romantic-tragi-comedy-crime-caper Pierrot le fou / Crazy Pete / Pierre Goes Wild (1965).

To be or not to be? That’s not really a question. (unsourced)

Screencap with subtitles from Une femme est une femme / A Woman is a Woman (1961).

Unlikely G: Anna Karina “Look, Ma, no gag reflex!” edition with bonus ménage à trois

The only thing more attractive to a man than demonstrating for him your lax gag reflex is doing so with a negative pregnancy test. Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Love it.

Anna Karina as Angéla with Jean-Claude Brialy as Émile in Une femme est une femme, 1961, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

A naughty cabaret dancer/singer—one of these days I will track down a scene on youtube and put it up here, she does this one in a sailor outfit that is hilarious—wants a baby (cause you know us women), but her boyfriend is not going for it, so she decides to hook it up with his friend Alfred (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who is always claiming to be in love with her, and sort-of hijinks ensue. It’s actually very witty and offbeat, and it has some fun music in it, too.

Alfred: Answer yes, and I owe you 100₣. Answer no, and you owe me 100₣, okay?
Bar Owner: Okay.
Alfred: Okay. Here’s the question: Can you loan me 100₣?