Portions of this post were originally published on September 26, 2009. And again on July 4, 2010. I’m phoning it in. What could be more American?
Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans, and, to those international friendohs from countries overseas to which our states once belonged as colonies — well, thanks for the memories. Days commemorating war always make me pray for peace. Here’s hoping that all nations can, in the words of the Beatles, come together. Also, twist and shout.
“Brooklyn’s on Fire!”, Nicole Atkins, Neptune City. I like this video here because it is made by someone in Brooklyn who likes Nicole Atkins and the 4th of july and baseball and likely all manner of things on which we could sit around and agree all day. Thank you, stranger! Your video’s view count has been dramatically affected by me since I found this last month!
Nicole Atkins is someone I stumbled over last year or maybe the year before after hearing one of her songs in a commercial and googling adtunes for days to find it. She has a really great, unique sound. She calls her music pop-noir.
She is a lion face, one of my favorite face types (all people look like an animal to me, or a blend of animals). I adore leonine women and I really love that she has a schnoz. It gives a woman character to have a big nose or a gap in her teeth, you know? It puts them that extra step past adorable into asymmetrically one of a kind, infinitely loveable. This goes for all of you. Love what you think are your flaws cause that’s probably the one part of you I seize on and fetishize most. I’m off topic. Back to this song.
Friday nights on the seventh floor
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Paper backs on the corner store
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Looking over the ledge,
the sidewalk traffic starts to spread
Summer’s begun across the Bay
And no bit of silence remains
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
La dee da, la dee da
And the band’s not begun just yet
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Fifty names you’re bound to forget
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Black and blue on the lakes
Wear badges from happier days
Late in the night, in ’84
Walked in through the old out door
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
La dee da, dee da, dee da
This would be my favorite movie if Cameron Diaz and Leonardo di Caprio hadn’t done their best to fuck it up. Bill the Butcher FOREVER.
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
I’m caught in the way,
of tears from much happier days
When we were young and unafraid,
of stupid mistakes that we made
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
Ladeeda, la dee da, dee da, dee da, dee da
This post originally appeared on Dec 29, 2009, at 2:02 p.m.
Garbo vamps.
Flesh and the Devil, 1926. Directed by Clarence Brown, based on the play The Undying Past, a translation by Beatrice Marshall of the 1894 German play Es War (“It Was”) by Hermann Sudermann.
Starring Greta Garbo as Countess Felicitas von Rhaden, later Mrs. von Eltz; John Gilbert, her real-life lover and one-time fiance as mistreated hero Leo von Harden; and Lars Hanson as Ulrich von Eltz. Gonna relay the brief plot via some killer screencaps. Enjoy.
At the crux of this silent melodrama is a love triangle aggravated by protagonist Leo’s continued desire for Felicitas, the adulterous wife of his best friend Ulrich — who married Felicitas after Leo’s duel with her first husband resulted in Leo’s being stationed in South Africa for five years — and author of his misery.
Supporting players are Barbara Kent and George Fawcett as Ulrich’s younger sister, who begs Felicitas to stop trying to have both her brother and his friend, as it can only result in yet another duel, and sage Pastor Voss, who has known both men all their lives. But the real star, of course, is Garbo and her face. Everyone else kind of fades in to the background.
The action begins with a ball where recently-trained soldier Leo first meets Felicitas von Rhaden, who he’d glimpsed briefly leaving the railway when he arrived in town. Felicitas also remembers the eye contact and throws him some more smoky glances. Stealing away from the ball with Leo, she conveniently does not mention she has a husband, so when Count von Rhaden catches them getting up to sexytimes in her bedroom, Leo has no choice but to accept the Count’s challenge to duel him.
Question for discussion: Would you seriously die for some chick you met at the train station even when you just had empirical evidence thrown in your face that she was lying by omission about being freaking married, so you knew there was a pretty good chance she was a skank? I mean, is her honor really more important than your life? What is wrong with boys? Anyway, Leo wins the duel and kills the Count.
For his trouble, Leo is sent to a remote army post in South Africa, but Felicitas stays in his thoughts, as evinced by these two, above and below, gorgeous pre-fancy FX stills. For me, simple cinematographic tricks of the early films are far more beautiful, haunting, and multi-dimensionally resonant than a thousand unnecessary CGI lensflares. (Dreamworks, write that down.)
Leo arrives home to find that, in his absence, Felicitas has married Ulrich, his best friend since childhood, who once became Leo’s blood brother with his little sister Hertha as a witness, and who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Felicitas for Leo while Leo was “out of town.” In Ulrich’s defense, having sex with a woman is a really good way to keep an eye on her while also taking time for fun. I mean, you can’t be all work and no play.
Felicitas is still all-up-ons, which obviously causes great conflict for Leo, who is still no great shakes at hiding his feelings. (He also continues to suck at not fooling around with married chicks.) Meanwhile, Ulrich’s little sister Hertha has caught on to her sister-in-law’s game and tries to intercede with Felicitas, seemingly to no avail. Leo goes to Pastor Voss for advice, who tries to counsel him against pursuing a relationship with Felicitas.
The pastor suggests that Felicitas is not the innocent pawn that love-goggled Leo perceives her to be, but instead is an active agent of temptation, perhaps even a metaphorical vehicle of Satan, a lying symbol of the falseness of a life lived away from a strong moral code.
Leo doesn’t totally cotton to the idea that the love of his life is just a jezebel who enjoys hurting men for sport, but Pastor Voss reminds him of the ruin she has wrought in his life already, forcing him to kill a man, sending him in to exile, and coming between Leo and Ulrich, his friend since boyhood. The pastor says, “I christened you separately, but I’ve scarcely seen you apart since.”
Mulling over the idea that Felicitas is not-so-blameless in this game of love, Leo flashes back on some particularly creepy and un-Christian moments in which he has caught sly-eyed Felicitas.
(It’s amazing the clarity that comes with celibacy.) This seems to actually get through to Leo, who it ends up has a capacity for outrage after all.
He goes and angrily confront Felicitas, taking her to task for the trouble she has caused him, seemingly for her own amusement, as she has specifically told him she will not leave Ulrich and that she wants to have her husband and Leo for a lover, too. When she doesn’t recant or apologize, Leo furiously goes for the throat.
Ulrich busts in to find Leo throttling his wife. Felicitas orders him to shoot Leo immediately — probably hoping that he will, and Leo won’t have the chance to explain why he was mad. Ulrich instead challenges Leo to a duel the next evening on a sort of sandbar-cum-island in the middle of their village’s lake called the Isle of Friendship, on which they used to play as boys.
Hertha, Ulrich’s sister, comes and begs Felicitas to stop the duel, but she will not. Finally, Hertha prays to God to soften her adulterous sister-in-law’s heart, and suddenly Felicitas looks guilt-stricken, gets all bundled up, and rushes out in to the freezing Winter night. This is cross-cut with scenes of the men preparing to duel, but finding themselves unable to even raise their guns and aim at one another because of their lifelong friendship. They realize this high-class hooker has basically wrecked them emotionally, and conclude that they would both be better off well-shot of her. They are friends again.
What’s been going on with the finally-redeemed Felicitas in the meanwhile, who’s been hurrying out across the ice to the Isle of Friendship as the men rekindle their love for one another and realize how worthlessly she has behaved? Mmm. Spoiler alert.
Bad girls finish last. Some releases further hammer this point home by showing a final scene in which the loving younger sister, Hertha, is on a carriage preparing to move to Munich, and Leo comes chasing after it to stop her. (Implying they will now hook up, because she is sweet and patient, and wants the best for everyone, instead of being kind of a whore, and now Leo and Ulrich will be brothers for real.)
Final thoughts: Boys, stop taking back your dreadful same old bitchface ex-girlfriends and tolerating their bullshit. Find a new bitchface and get embroiled in new bullshit!
This post originally appeared on Dec 2, 2009, at 9:57 PM.
Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.
On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”
I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!
I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”
“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source
We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.
No babies were slapped in the writing of this self-audit.
edit: So this is the promised Flashback Friday post that picks up the thread of thought in the 69 Days of Wonder Woman: Day 5 post. It’s all about rejecting the modern standard of cattiness and pointless avarice and trading them for cooperation and admiration. I mean, Jesus Christ, we are playing right in to the hands of the machine with this bullshit behavior, ladies. If you’re all bound up in bitching each other out, then you’re not paying attention to what’s going on around you, which means you’re not trying to change anything, which means everything can stay its shitty same self, which means the machine wins. Do you see? Revolution! — won’t you please help me do it up right?
It seems to me that despite all our claims of girl power and sisterhood women are still our own worst enemies, and I do not have to ponder or prod at the why of that: it is manifestly so much easier to lay the blame for a situational upset or emotional turmoil at some other chick’s feet than to examine your own self.
Scanned by yours truly.
“We have met the enemy, and he is us” (Walt Kelly, Pogo creator, comic legend). You know?
And so we fruitlessly turn against each other instead of joining forces and really making new and great things happen, and the more often we do that, the less is ever truly resolved, and women end up with all these doubts and neuroses that we’ve unfairly placed on ourselves. We are all doing ourselves a bad turn. Like, why, on meeting someone equal to you in strength, would you need to best them instead of teaming up and being friends? Wouldn’t they understand you better than anyone else you’ve ever dealt with, and wouldn’t you better benefit from mutual friendship than from facing off? What a horrible instinct, to destroy what’s like you in order to be sure you are still alone and “The Best.”
Wait, I feel like I’ve written something about this before … I want to say it involved a picture of Zooey Deschanel looking twee with a pink ribbon.
(three or so minutes later)
Okay, found it. It’ll be today’s Flashback Friday, and it’ll be posted directly following this WW Day 5, inspired by and related to this post. And actually it works great because that was about my first parent-teacher conference for kidlet last year, and I just went to her first parent-teacher conference for this year yesterday.
The journal has hit rock-bottom: I’m blogging about cats.
Women, poets, and especially artists like cats; delicate natures only can realize their sensitive nervous systems.
(Helen M. Winslow)
I think that’s horseshit. Me, I’m more of a Dog Guy, and I consider myself all kinds of artistic, introspective, and delicate and shit. Especially in my decorous manner of expression, yes? My deal with cats is I understand them far too well to dote on them: fawning, soft, pretty little big-eyed phonies — I’m a woman, cat; I’m on to your game. My kind invented your act, pal.
Except for my cat. He is pretty rad. He has no name and he purrs right before he bites you.
When I lived in Portland I ended up through my husband’s family finding myself the owner of three cats: Killwhitey, Blackpowerforever, and Sadie. (Guess which one I didn’t name.) They were fine for two and a half or so years and then all three died on me, of different causes and at different points, within a month — October through November, actually, of 2008. Very disturbing. R.I.P. to them and to my short career as a custodian of cats.
My aforementioned original, “real” cat that I’ve always had in California, who has hung around for some twelve-odd years, is his own man and toward him I make no pretensions of ownership. He’s off his nut but I love that fierce little dude.
Percent of women in the U.S. with a Bachelor’s Degree or higher, according to the recent United States Census: 10.9, versus 9% of males. Folks who dig deviant dames, it is looking good for you!
Portions of this post were originally published on September 26, 2009.
Happy Fourth of July to my fellow Americans, and, to those international friendohs from countries overseas to which our states once belonged as colonies — well, thanks for the memories. Days commemorating war always make me pray for peace. Here’s hoping that all nations can, in the words of the Beatles, come together. Also, twist and shout.
“Brooklyn’s on Fire!”, Nicole Atkins, Neptune City. I like this video here because it is made by someone in Brooklyn who likes Nicole Atkins and the 4th of july and baseball and likely all manner of things on which we could sit around and agree all day. Thank you, stranger! Your video’s view count has been dramatically affected by me since I found this last month!
Nicole Atkins is someone I stumbled over last year or maybe the year before after hearing one of her songs in a commercial and googling adtunes for days to find it. She has a really great, unique sound. She calls her music pop-noir.
She is a lion face, one of my favorite face types (all people look like an animal to me, or a blend of animals). I adore leonine women and I really love that she has a schnoz. It gives a woman character to have a big nose or a gap in her teeth, you know? It puts them that extra step past adorable into asymmetrically one of a kind, infinitely loveable. This goes for all of you. Love what you think are your flaws cause that’s probably the one part of you I seize on and fetishize most. I’m off topic. Back to this song.
Friday nights on the seventh floor
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Paper backs on the corner store
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Looking over the ledge,
the sidewalk traffic starts to spread
Summer’s begun across the Bay
And no bit of silence remains
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
La dee da, la dee da
And the band’s not begun just yet
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Fifty names you’re bound to forget
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
Black and blue on the lakes
Wear badges from happier days
Late in the night, in ’84
Walked in through the old out door
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
La dee da, dee da, dee da
This would be my favorite movie if Cameron Diaz and Leonardo di Caprio hadn’t done their best to fuck it up. Bill the Butcher FOREVER.
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
(FOURTH OF, JULY, BROOKLYN’S, ON FIRE)
I’m caught in the way,
of tears from much happier days
When we were young and unafraid,
of stupid mistakes that we made
Oh, Brooklyn’s on fire,
and fills July hearts with desire
Sleep will not come, until the morn
Cause tonight your memories are born
Ladeeda, la dee da, dee da, dee da, dee da
Bettie Page in catsuit. Unknown date. R.I.P., Queenie.
Like Batman, the Catwoman operated outside the law within her own code of morality. She predated the creation of Alfred, the Penguin, and even famous heroines like Wonder Woman, Miss Fury, and Black Cat. Catwoman broke the glass ceiling of the comic industry and raised the bar for future female characters. From their first battle in Batman #1, the caped crusader has uniquely allowed her to escape.
Selina Kyle became a foil to Batman, a reflection of his own dark desires and need for healing, as well a Jungian anima to his animus.
(Fies, Elizabeth. “History of a Femme Fatale.” Catwoman: The Creation of a Twentieth Century Goddess.Batmedia, 2001.)
Fans of different generations of the Catwoman archetype make their own attractions to the character. Obviously she fills a void in comics of complex female characters; women that both male and female readers can relate to and admire. The largest difference between our modern mythology and the fairy tales and Greek myths of yore is the silent exclusion of half of our population.
(Fies, Elizabeth. “Feminist Role Model.” Catwoman: The Creation of a Twentieth Century Goddess.Batmedia, 2001.)
Originally comics were bought by almost as many females as males, so economics does not explain the lack of female representation in the DC universe. Unlike societies that told tales of Hera, Diana, the Amazons, Boudicca, Judith, Matilda, Cleopatra, Inana, Jinga, Queen Elizabeth, Morgan, Joan of Arc, and many other strong women, as a culture Americans lacked the archetype of the Warrior Queen.
(Fies, Elizabeth. “Feminist Role Model.” Catwoman: The Creation of a Twentieth Century Goddess.Batmedia, 2001.)
Gillian Anderson (Dana Scully, The X-Files) in purple catsuit. Jesus wept.
The invention of Catwoman begat a new generation of powerful characters like Wonder Woman, Xena, and Agent Scully that may not have been heard without Selina’s birth in 1940.
(Fies, Elizabeth. “Feminist Role Model.” Catwoman: The Creation of a Twentieth Century Goddess.Batmedia, 2001.)
For a Tear is an Intellectual thing;
And a Sigh is the Sword of an Angel King
And the bitter groan of a Martyr’s woe
Is an Arrow from the Almighty’s Bow.
(William Blake, excerpt from “To the Deists,” in Jerusalem: The Emanation of The Giant Albion.)
Alas! the Female Martyr
Is She also the Divine Image?
(William Blake, For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise.)
She,
In the dark,
Found light
Brighter than many ever see.
She,
Within herself,
Found loveliness,
Through the soul’s own mastery.
And now the world receives
From her dower:
The message of the strength
Of inner power.
(Langston Hughes, “Helen Keller.”)
I think it’s really beautiful and awesome that Mr. Hughes took the time to recognize in Helen Keller a kindred spirit and spare so many thoughts and special words for her. It is a testament to both their spirits.
I have this very hackneyed and cliched theory that women are like cats and men are like dogs. It’s overarching and misogynistic and probably a bunch of hooey, because I can’t even apply it to my own good girl friends, but the thing is sometimes it feels like it is just exactly the truth. In talking to my daughter’s father this weekend, I found out that his wife, from whom he is very recently separated, apparently doesn’t like me. By which I mean, hella does not like me. Historically, even. This is pretty distressing to me because, like an idiot, I thought we were cool.
Not only had I been really excited about meeting her, about which I clearly remember writing in several entries, but in the actual event of it I’d made a point of being polite, respectful, friendly, and talkative with her on the occasions we met. We talked at various times both in person and in letters about my move down here, about cooking, about our families — I really thought we’d hit it off. I gave her a card for Valentine’s day and tried consistently to be as friendly and upbeat as possible when she wrote me about her troubles with my daughter’s father, encouraging her and saying I was praying for the best possible outcome.
Photgraphed by Andre de Dienes.
To find out that she not only never liked me before but I am thinking pretty much actively hates me now was upsetting, but it was not the hardest blow. That was still to come. I don’t understand it, and I’ve known for a long time that his sister didn’t like me, never really understood why she had a bad impression of me but eventually gave up hoping she would change her mind and have just continued in as friendly a way as possible, but things are really compounded now. The toughest thing for me to grapple with is that Grandma P, who I’d always counted as a friend and counted on for sitting for my daughter and as a sounding board now and again in my own life, actually thought that my daughter’s father left his wife for me. That she would even consider drawing a conclusion like that, after knowing me all this time and knowing the separation and pain that I myself have been going through this year, is shocking and devastating to me.
The thing with his wife was bad enough, but the thing with his mom is stunning to me, and, as the time has gone by since he and I talked this weekend and I’ve had a chance to work through the jumble of feelings I have about all this, it turns out that’s one of the things that I’m having the toughest time with. I guess I was a fool? to imagine I had a connection with Grandma P, a) because I know better about myself and how some people just don’t like me, and b) I know that connections with many people are illusory and couched in ulterior motives. But I really did think that we were friends. I’ve welcomed her in to every home in which I’ve lived, always looked forward to her visits, encouraged her to call frequently and to have a relationship with my daughter even when her father and I were not in touch. So this has been a big surprise.
I don’t know why they dislike me so. If it’s because he and I hurt each other five years ago, then, isn’t that between us? I understand. When people hurt my friends and the ones I love, I want to tear them apart — but I also trust my friends’ and loved ones’ judgment. And if they tell me that it’s okay, then I have to know that that’s the end of my anger, and they know the way of it better than me. So if we can forgive one another and rebuild a friendship for not only our daughter’s sake but for the redemption of our own selves, then why in the name of heaven is that a bad or threatening thing?
This is what I mean about cats and women. They are full of secrets and you can never know what they are thinking. When dogs don’t like you, they make no trouble to disguise it: they bark and growl at you and try to bite. Cats are so much sneakier, you think they are fun to play with and you can trust them, and all the while they are stalking around and then coming out of nowhere with their claws … These women that I thought I could tentatively call friends made me think I was doing an okay job of becoming something like close and bonded with them, convinced me to offer up parts of myself and my personal backstories which I have a terrible time doing exactly because of situations like this, and it turns out that I guess I was wrong. I failed to meet the mark in some way, or could never have done so for some reason that is totally shrouded in mystery to me, like when they were handing out the woman-cat brains I was at a Polish sausage stand and missed the memo. It’s a real bummer.
There is nothing I can do about it except keep upbeat, focus on the daisies and bluebirds, and keep offering the olive branch as I have tried again and again to do — and pray that it “takes” at some eventual time. Because we have all got to know each other basically until we die, and I don’t understand why that has to be unpleasant or filled with drama, when we can just as easily choose to find the good in the situation? Until then, until they come around, I guess, I have to concentrate, have to try and stop dwelling on it and stop feeling sorry for myself, accept what I cannot change, and go forward. It’s just harder to do than say.
At a superficial blush, I think her paintings deal with imagery and conventional styles that are popular right now in the commercial world of art: lissome nymphs interacting with the natural world, an almost photo-realistic style, like a photograph or illustration recreated with oil paints, but I feel like that is, like I said a superficial comparison. The truth is that she really finds the darkness at the heart even of the popularity of those images, and more nakedly and skillfully tells the story behind them.
“Isabel’s Secret.”
The work has authority. I suppose maybe if you were to just striaghtforwardly describe her painting next to another, similar product on Etsy or something, telling only what you literally see vis-a-vis the subject matter and depiction, it could be accidentally mistaken for one of this genre of lesser and more wanly committed artistic storytellers, trendy but sort of twee, but that is not the case for me with Brooks.
“Wanderingbel.”
Besides her obvious superiority even of strictly mechanical talent — which gives her paintings a sophisticated weight lacking in some illustrations that deal with similar subjects and imagery — for me, there is more going on thematically in her compositions.
“The Gaze.”
I feel like if you look at her work, Brooks digs much deeper, like her work is a more authentic prototype than a lighter imitation, a more complete interpretation of an older and overarching theme.
“Reverent and revered.”
I am fascinated by the legends and tales that have been passed down through the rise and fall of empires and how they are weathered by oral tradition and cultural change.
“A Promise to Return.”
I work with my own personal mythology to reflect ideas on love, memory, and the inexplicable human talent for anthropomorphizing the cycles of life and all its manifestations. (via)
“Isabel and the Life Web.”
Adjusting to being Single and Living in Richmond is a bit of a roller coaster ride, but I’m pretty sure its more Tank Girl and less Hope Floats so it ain’t all bad. (blog)
Love Tank Girl. Sold.
“Driving Into the Sun.”
To discuss commissions or wholesale orders (or just to say howdy!) please drop me a line at: Robotroadkill [!at] gmail.com. (etsy)
“Half a second,” my favorite one.
I should first mention that all my analogies of life tend to be nature based, I was raised in an all female landscape business that was founded and run by my mother, for years we shared generations of stories over the tops of the flowers we cared for. Those ecosystems provided a framework and context to talk about the more complicated parts of life. That is where my imagery comes from. (interview)
Monocle is a simple search tool that puts a universal search field at your disposal. When you want search, you can choose from a number of engines to perform the search in different places. Monocle comes preloaded with engines for Google, Wikipedia, Windows Live Search and Yahoo! Search. You can easily add your own engines by performing an example search inside a web browser window in Monocle. (source)
This is in no way an endorsement of that Mac App. I have never used it and likely never will, as I have had the same phone since 2005 and will probably continue to have it until it literally falls apart in my hands because I have grown to believe that I, myself, am built-in obsolescence personified, and everything I learn to use and grow accustomed to must immediately fall out of human use and knowledge, so that I remain freakishly anachronistic in my understanding of technology.
Et tu, Bender, my metal and small and doesn’t judge me at all robot friend? Then you can all keep your fancy-dancy iPhones and droids, and be sure to bite our shiny metal asses.
I believe there is always a person like this in every group that is behind the crest of the trend by deliberate choice, a lone cowboy on an uneasy horse at the edge of the horizon, never quite part of the pack of trailblazers, always slightly at a remove from the rest of society just in case this next invention is that society’s downfall, and in this generation among those I am close to, I apparently have taken on that mantle. Mmm, Apocalypse Bean Soup — with hamhock, even? Wow, thanks, cowpoke! Just like I like it!
So, yes, I know nothing about this newfangled Monocle app folderol. I just like the ads, don’t you?
Flesh and the Devil, 1926. Directed by Clarence Brown, based on the play The Undying Past, a translation by Beatrice Marshall of the 1894 German play Es War (“It Was”) by Hermann Sudermann.
Starring Greta Garbo as Countess Felicitas von Rhaden, later Mrs. von Eltz; John Gilbert, her real-life lover and one-time fiance as mistreated hero Leo von Harden; and Lars Hanson as Ulrich von Eltz. Gonna relay the brief plot via some killer screencaps. Enjoy.
At the crux of this silent melodrama is a love triangle aggravated by protagonist Leo’s continued desire for Felicitas, the adulterous wife of his best friend Ulrich — who married Felicitas after Leo’s duel with her first husband resulted in Leo’s being stationed in South Africa for five years — and author of his misery.
Supporting players are Barbara Kent and George Fawcett as Ulrich’s younger sister, who begs Felicitas to stop trying to have both her brother and his friend, as it can only result in yet another duel, and sage Pastor Voss, who has known both men all their lives. But the real star, of course, is Garbo and her face. Everyone else kind of fades in to the background.
The action begins with a ball where recently-trained soldier Leo first meets Felicitas von Rhaden, who he’d glimpsed briefly leaving the railway when he arrived in town. Felicitas also remembers the eye contact and throws him some more smoky glances. Stealing away from the ball with Leo, she conveniently does not mention she has a husband, so when Count von Rhaden catches them getting up to sexytimes in her bedroom, Leo has no choice but to accept the Count’s challenge to duel him.
Question for discussion: Would you seriously die for some chick you met at the train station even when you just had empirical evidence thrown in your face that she was lying by omission about being freaking married, so you knew there was a pretty good chance she was a skank? I mean, is her honor really more important than your life? What is wrong with boys? Anyway, Leo wins the duel and kills the Count.
For his trouble, Leo is sent to a remote army post in South Africa, but Felicitas stays in his thoughts, as evinced by these two, above and below, gorgeous pre-fancy FX stills. For me, simple cinematographic tricks of the early films are far more beautiful, haunting, and multi-dimensionally resonant than a thousand unnecessary CGI lensflares. (Dreamworks, write that down.)
Leo arrives home to find that, in his absence, Felicitas has married Ulrich, his best friend since childhood, who once became Leo’s blood brother with his little sister Hertha as a witness, and who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Felicitas for Leo while Leo was “out of town.” In Ulrich’s defense, having sex with a woman is a really good way to keep an eye on her while also taking time for fun. I mean, you can’t be all work and no play.
Felicitas is still all-up-ons, which obviously causes great conflict for Leo, who is still no great shakes at hiding his feelings. (He also continues to suck at not fooling around with married chicks.) Meanwhile, Ulrich’s little sister Hertha has caught on to her sister-in-law’s game and tries to intercede with Felicitas, seemingly to no avail. Leo goes to Pastor Voss for advice, who tries to counsel him against pursuing a relationship with Felicitas.
The pastor suggests that Felicitas is not the innocent pawn that love-goggled Leo perceives her to be, but instead is an active agent of temptation, perhaps even a metaphorical vehicle of Satan, a lying symbol of the falseness of a life lived away from a strong moral code.
Leo doesn’t totally cotton to the idea that the love of his life is just a jezebel who enjoys hurting men for sport, but Pastor Voss reminds him of the ruin she has wrought in his life already, forcing him to kill a man, sending him in to exile, and coming between Leo and Ulrich, his friend since boyhood. The pastor says, “I christened you separately, but I’ve scarcely seen you apart since.”
Mulling over the idea that Felicitas is not-so-blameless in this game of love, Leo flashes back on some particularly creepy and un-Christian moments in which he has caught sly-eyed Felicitas.
(It’s amazing the clarity that comes with celibacy.) This seems to actually get through to Leo, who it ends up has a capacity for outrage after all.
He goes and angrily confront Felicitas, taking her to task for the trouble she has caused him, seemingly for her own amusement, as she has specifically told him she will not leave Ulrich and that she wants to have her husband and Leo for a lover, too. When she doesn’t recant or apologize, Leo furiously goes for the throat.
Ulrich busts in to find Leo throttling his wife. Felicitas orders him to shoot Leo immediately — probably hoping that he will, and Leo won’t have the chance to explain why he was mad. Ulrich instead challenges Leo to a duel the next evening on a sort of sandbar-cum-island in the middle of their village’s lake called the Isle of Friendship, on which they used to play as boys.
Hertha, Ulrich’s sister, comes and begs Felicitas to stop the duel, but she will not. Finally, Hertha prays to God to soften her adulterous sister-in-law’s heart, and suddenly Felicitas looks guilt-stricken, gets all bundled up, and rushes out in to the freezing Winter night. This is cross-cut with scenes of the men preparing to duel, but finding themselves unable to even raise their guns and aim at one another because of their lifelong friendship. They realize this high-class hooker has basically wrecked them emotionally, and conclude that they would both be better off well-shot of her. They are friends again.
What’s been going on with the finally-redeemed Felicitas in the meanwhile, who’s been hurrying out across the ice to the Isle of Friendship as the men rekindle their love for one another and realize how worthlessly she has behaved? Mmm. Spoiler alert.
Bad girls finish last. Some releases further hammer this point home by showing a final scene in which the loving younger sister, Hertha, is on a carriage preparing to move to Munich, and Leo comes chasing after it to stop her. (Implying they will now hook up, because she is sweet and patient, and wants the best for everyone, instead of being kind of a whore, and now Leo and Ulrich will be brothers for real.)
Final thoughts: Boys, stop taking back your dreadful same old bitchface ex-girlfriends and tolerating their bullshit. Find a new bitchface and get embroiled in new bullshit!
Grand news. The parent-teacher conference went wonderfully!, beyond my wildest dreams!, and I think I may even have snowed kidlet’s teacher in to buying that I am an adult, an elaborate new con on which I’ve been working, whose growing success at the grocery, church, and among new acquaintances is beginning to perturb me and make me check for crow’s feet.
On the way back from picking up the kidlet and Special K from the park where they played while I was at the conference because I was busy conferencing on top secret conferencey shit, Katohs and I were discussing all things fantastic, adorable, unique, and vintage-ish, as we are wont to do, and she said, “I came to a point in my life where I realized I was never going to get to be Zooey Deschanel, and I was like, ‘What’s the point in going on?'”
I replied, “But that’s okay. All we can do is try to inject a little Zooey into each day, like be inspired by her energy!” advancing one of my typical over-optimistic, all-god’s-chillun-got-hands, hippie-crazy-go-nuts solutions that often barely even mean anything in the final analysis. When I am up against a tough point in conversation with a friendoh who is downohs, I sometimes morph into Dharma from Dharma and Greg — cryptic comments about the universe and energy and destiny just fall out of my mouth. But I think, actually, this time I managed to string together some pretty good advice!
I think we women often admire a quality in another woman and somehow, whether it is something ugly and atavistic, or something society has trained us to do that we can more easily shake off, we want that quality for ourselves instead of simply accepting with grace and admiration what a lucky thing it is that that other woman has the quality we like and how fortunate we have been to experience it. We are a covetous bunch, we ladies. “If I could sing like her; if I had hair like hers; if only I had her body; her style; her car or career or cake serving set…”
“…then?” What? Your life would be perfect? Never! There has never been a perfect, easy, or charmed life in the history of EVER! We are wasting such chances with our jealousy and poisonous reaction to a standout quality in another gal, blinded by our instant avarice: when something sticks out in your mind about another woman, ignore the negative instinct and instead seize a vital opportunity to connect with a woman, as two people. We need all to work on this.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source
We have to love each other first, because then loving ourselves will come next, and then when you have so much going on already, it’s only natural that the love of whatever man or woman strikes your fancy will follow! (See, if the whole admire-other-women-and-love-them-for-the-reflection-of-the-creator-in-them-that-is-also-in-you bit didn’t work, then hopefully the it-will-make-your-crush-crush-back bit will. I’m new-agey but also very sneaky!)
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
None of this is to say Katohs was jealous. She was expressing admiration for Zooey Deschanel. But I think it’s interesting that our culture has conditioned a young woman, especially even one as bright and categorically outstanding as Special K, to, when she sees a woman she admires and idolizes, even joke about wanting to be her, rather than just be able to be like her. Weird people we all are or have been made to be. I’m trying to change, personally. I’m hoping it’s something that can be a choice.
Lost credit, one of my zillion pics back before I was wise enough to source (again)
Other highlights: over lunch at Thai House, I introduced Katohs to the concept and history of “spoonerisms;” kidlet told me flatly that she was going to marry Jude Law, and, when she did, I would need to build her a house for them to live in (knowing Jude Law and the rumors I have heard of his skeeviness this is entirely possible and I guess I had better start saving); and Special K and I determined that it is mainly okay to slap a baby if the baby is really, really annoying.
November is my least favorite month. Well, I’m not high on January, either, actually. They are both just such drags, coming off of the high of October and December, respectively. Bleah. You may remember that I have a philosophy about dealing with downers, vis a vis boobs and their efficacious curing powers therein.
‘Naked November’ by Gabrielle Chiapparini on flickr
I’ve decided to put that theory in to large play all this month, while exploring ideas about changing views of women’s sexuality, including mine. So welcome to NSFW November! Every day this month, I’ll be spotlighting Miss Novembers of Playboys past; it’s easier than searching out autumny-fancy-pants amateurs and, since I felt compelled to go commercial on this idea, part of pursuing that will be to explore the compulsion.
(Farewell, artistic free-spirited amateur nudes; I am switching over to commercial bullshit for the month. FOR SCIENCE.)
Maybe the interesting stuff to come out of this will be ideas about the photographs’ compositions, thoughts on the lady in question’s body shape, details of the model’s later contributions to society, or even factoids about the magazine itself at that time. We’ll see, yes?
The Thought Experiment 