I’m back
The trip was great fun. In Paris, Jimmy Buffet stood in front of me in line to buy a CD after a performance by the Spaghetti Western Orchestra. He was wearing a beret (dork) and was shorter, fatter and greyer than I would have imagined.
In London, C and I passed Ricky Gervais on the street while walking near Piccadilly Circus. He looked exactly like a middle-aged slightly paunchy average dude. Seeing him made my entire day.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
9:50 am | Video | Listening | 1
As I said earlier, we caught a performance of The Spaghetti Western Orchestra at a tiny little sit-down venue in Paris on our last day there. They are amazing and it was a wonderful way to end our week in the City of Lights.
SWO will be in Texas next month. They’re playing in College Station Nov. 11 and I’m going. Anyone else in?
Starlet’s suicide highlights plight of women in Korea
3:00 pm | Internerd | Below The 38th Parallel, Girly, Reading | 0
More love for Michelle
10:08 pm | Internerd | Girly, Reading | 2
Deepak Chopra on what Sarah Palin represents (via Ariel Gore):
And here’s Michelle Obama blogging (!) about Lilly Ledbetter and equal pay (via Web-Goddess).
(Sorry for getting all poli-blog lately but I have never felt so passionately about an election as I do right now. Plus it’s a well-established fact that I *love* Michelle Obama. Maybe even more than I love her husband. We’ll return to our regularly scheduled narcissistic programming soon.)
Nonsense!
11:00 pm | Video | Places, The Man | 3
Nonsense! from Brittanie on Vimeo.
“Look! A puppy!” God.
(Filmed in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin. For the record, my husband doesn’t really have sausage fingers, as can be evidenced by the last few seconds of the video.)
Family Kleenex
5:12 pm | Shorts | Reading | 0
Susie Bright reprints an amazing short story by Briandaniel Oglesby.
Bring the Weapons
3:00 pm | Video | Friends, Watching, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? | 0
Bring the Weapons from Andrew Laker on Vimeo.
My long-time friend and all-round creative person Butch Laker has finished his documentary on underground wrestling (wrasslin’) in Indiana and has set it free online. Click here to learn more about the bloodiest, strangest and most fear-inducing film on wrestling you’ll ever see. If you like it, please leave him a comment, and forward his link to your friends.
Stupid day job
2:40 pm | Video | Ha!, Watching | 1
Oh lordy, this makes me LOL.
How I spent my morning
11:00 am | Video | Houston, Watching | 0
Watching a 90-minute History Channel documentary about the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the worst natural disaster in US History. Today marks one month since Hurricane Ike hit Galveston. (Via MeFi).
I think I fell in love with Berlin
9:45 am | Shorts | Places, Writing | 1
There is one particular image-memory. A square, the grass was green like a velvet Christmas dress and the sky was blue and cold. I sat on a low brick wall. Behind me were ancient marble buildings, the only clouds in the sky. It was still morning, and the yellow warm of sunlight shone from the gilded dome above but hadn’t yet reached the ground. I remember the metallic modern skyscrapers standing across the river.
A woman walked up to me, small and short with long black hair covered by a scarf, skirts flowing. She was carrying a scribbled piece of cardboard.
“Do you speak English?” she asked. I looked her in the face. “No.”
“Sprachen sie deutsch?” Her voice was accented, but not German. “No.” I said again.
Levi Stubbs
8:06 pm | Video | Listening | 0
Composer of one of my favorite songs.
Jury Duty
The case was a real doozy. Domestic assault, and the woman recanted her story following the man’s arrest.
I made it to voir dire. I thought I knew what to expect, but I was wrong. The DA, an extremely good-looking 30-something with a Carolinan drawl and a bow-tie around his neck, asked the pool questions about the 5th Amendment, the language of law, people’s particular biases regarding property and innocence. I sat smugly while several men opined that evoking the right not to self-incriminated automatically made a person look guilty. The DA was a real smooth-talker. Charming and likable. A good lawyer.
I thought to myself that if I made it to the trial I would be as even-handed as possible. As a feminist I am obligated to give him the benefit of the doubt, because it is true that some women have made up these stories. But how does a court prosecute a case when neither the victim nor the defendant is willing to take the stand. And furthermore, are these cases even worth trying?
This one made me think real hard. On the one hand, assuming what happened really did happen, then a crime has been committed regardless of whether the victim will admit it. On the other hand, there are many reasons why a woman might not want her significant other to be taken to jail (fear of retribution being the least of them). I’m already a little bit wary of inviting the government into the personal lives of every day people and in a way this seems like a step too far. On the third hand, perhaps I could be a voice for victims who can’t have a voice of their own?
I am still working out in my head how I feel about all this. What do you think? The case was interesting and I would have liked to sit for it, but I was cut when asked if I’d ever had a negative experience with a police officer. A few days later I got a check for $6 in the mail, a check which probably cost the city more than $6 to write, print and mail.
Sleeping beauty
11:35 pm | Shorts | Houston, Writing | 0
In the days after Ike, when bundles of tree branches still lined my street and the backyard next door was in a state of disarray, C directed me to look outside, where I saw (through the limbs and leaves that remained) a squirrel, asleep on the ledge of my neighbor’s upstairs window. It’s head was literally resting on it’s paws, and I imagined for a second how deep this sleep must have been, a secret cubbyhole away from the neighborhood cats, the confusion following the storm, and all the bad vibes the weeks before had wrought.
Have you ever seen a squirrel napping? Trust me when I tell you how warm it will make you feel.
Lindy Hop
11:00 am | Video | Watching | 0
David Sedaris
12:40 am | Photo Album | Reading | 5
Read my review of the evening at Houstonist.
The Archive
10:30 am | Video | Listening, Watching | 0
The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.
Linked from Butch, a short (7-minute) documentary about the largest private record collection in the world.
Have a little common sense
10:48 am | Shorts | Reading | 0
My list of books I want to read grows exponentially with each book I check off the list.
New rule: If a book is shitty, or boring, or too cliched to be enjoyed, I do not have to finish it. There are too many books and too little time.