He’s the li’l reason for the season (thanks to Kinda for doing all the work!).
Archive for December, 2009
YOUR HOLIDAY E-CARD IS HERE
December 21, 2009HONORARY BLOG MENTION
December 21, 2009
We’ve been getting a lot of linkage from It All Started with Carbon Monoxide, which is a blog that you can download onto your personal computer at http://itallstarted.wordpress.com/.
It’s a music blog, and the bands that I recognize on it, I like, and the ones I don’t, I’m interested in. But the main reason wordpress has connected us is because we both used the phrase “obligatory christmas.”
QUOTE OF THE DAY
December 18, 2009“I talked in third person and wondered if I should be daring and exciting and eat the mystery nachos – - or stay safe with the pizza – - then I debated the pros and cons out loud of both options.”
–My cousin Anneke, on which Lunchable she would eat on her bus ride to New York.
She chose the pizza.
BURGERTIME
December 16, 2009Or, Four Reasons Why I am Still Obsessed with a Videogame from 1982
I. Title
Hey, is it BurgerTime?
No, no, we’re just having dinner. I don’t know that I want to call it BurgerTime. That seems crass.
But we’re having burgers, right?
Yes, but it’s really a time for us to talk and eat food with our hands and take time to recount our fortunes and misfortunes along the road of life. At some point, there might even be dancing.
But it’s happening at a certain time, and there will be hamburgers, right?
There will be some very large hamburgers, but we’re also expecting pickles and eggs and hotdogs, although the rumor is that those latter comestibles are somewhat irked with me, as I am a chef, and they are opposed to this profession.
In fact, one of them of them threatened to chase us around a vertical maze of their own construction. In consideration of the fact that some of our entrees are not going to be as pleased with our company as the hamburgers, I suppose, if you must, you could call these gathering – -
BURGERTIME!
Very well then.
II. Inversion of Standard Videogame Semiotics
Food! I should wander towards it and power-up!
Oh no.
Food! I should wander towards it and power-up!
Oh no.
III. Formality and Gender
“While making burgers, Peter Pepper must deal with three enemies: Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle, and Mr. Egg. Enemies can be dodged, killed, or temporarily stunned.”–Wikipedia
Ahah, Mr. Egg! You have met an unfortunate end as the result of my hidden pepper supply! Look onward!, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Hot Dog – - for the sake of your children and your wives and your wives’ children and your children’s wives – - the abyss awaits you, should you chase me further!
IV. A Remarkable Scarcity of Human Dignity
If I must run from food, I must wear a chef’s outfit while doing so.
If I must wear a chef’s outfit while running from food, I must also be shaped like a rectangle.
If I finally reach the pepper, it must not vanquish my foes, but rather, temporarily stun them while I run from them like a coward.
If I run like a coward, I may also use myself as bait, to trick foes into following me onto thinly-disguised traps.
If I complete a level, it is not to rescue a damsel in distress or financial gain, but rather, merely for the sake of my own life. Which is defined by being chased by what I cannot control.
More pepper, please.
(I’m also obsessed because it’s one of the hardest games I’ve ever played)
ANNE CHARLOTTE ROBERTSON
December 13, 2009Last night I went to Light Industry at Artists Space see selections from the Five Year Diary by Anne Charlotte Robertson. It would be difficult to view the entire work in one go, as it’s over thirty six hours long.
Robertson’s work makes you realize just how lazy most memoir — if not just the act of remembering – - is. During the Five Year Diary (which spans a much longer time than that) she shot roll after roll of 8mm film and documented her struggles with her everyday life – - which is made vastly complicated by mental illness.
One of these complications are simply the presence of signs. Living in Boston, Robertson is overwhelmed by signs that tell her to pay tolls, quote Justice James Thurber, advertise products that would have next to nothing to do with her. She documents them, as well as her reactions to them, and you can see just how hostile these signs would be to someone who was struggling with their everyday life (and also, just how ridiculous signs are in general).
Another issue is garbage, which when you live in Boston (which she does at the time) would make just about anyone a little crazy. Because it’s collected once a week, the result is that you’re left looking at it in your apartment for a little too long. Yes, really.
But Robertson struggles with living as an ethical vegetarian, so she’s also composting in her own apartment, sorting through garbage, trying to determine which objects should be “returned to earth.” And she loses a boyfriend that way, throwing his leather satchel into the wilderness so that it can do everybody a favor and be inconspicuously subsumed by nature.
At one point, Robertson tries to throw away her reels (I can’t remember if they were developed or not at this point – - at one point she had 900 rolls of undeveloped film) only to be returned by her landlord, accompanied by his illustration of a bee and the words “Bee Optimistic.”
Robertson recorded an audio diary to accompany the Super 8 reels, but years later she would speak over the audio diary in performance, and this is where the genius of the Five Year Diary becomes obvious.
In most memoir, we have the benefit of being able to look back at things with an experienced mind, and tailor details or events so that they’ll fit either in the context of a story or as some kind of reasoned approach to how we approach life (see this entire blog for details, or perhaps you and I could go hit the New York “monologue” circuit).
By preserving her original inner voice and leaving in that initial audio diary, you hear the raw anguish and emotion of events Robertson’s life as the older Robertson explains to you the reasons for that aspect. And this isn’t to say that the older Robertson is no less poetic, mysterious, or enigmatic than the younger one, but the combination of the voices gives it a much weightier context.
It’s hard not to be a little jealous of Robertson’s mythologies. Even when she is haunted by what to eat or confounded by the importance of Tom Baker in her life (she gets a major crush on Dr. Who, and compares him to Jesus.*), it all feels so much more real than just rattling off anecdotes on a blog or during a party or whatever, because all these events have a tremendous amount of weight. But just as this slight envy or amusement might settle in (and this is probably a tribute to how well these selections were curated) we see how Robertson struggles with the loss of her friend’s child. She films flowers, brings them to the child’s grave, the vocal track in both past and present, simply repeating the name over and over . . . the simple repetition manages to be both harrowing and sublime, and it captures what the feeling of loss is really like, a complicated and yet sickeningly simple experience which is well outside of the parameters of obituary columns or eulogies.
When I left the viewing, I found myself in the surreal concoction that is Manhattan at Christmas time. In keeping with New York tradition, rowdy bar enthusiasts were dressed up as Santas (the false presumption being that someone being dressed up as Santa is less likely to be arrested or thrown out of a bar. Or possibly slapped.). And for once, I allowed myself to just be confused by it and just appreciate the weirdness of torn up cotton beards in the gutter, and the surprising number of all red outfits on the street.
Hopefully in this day and age we can look forward to Robertson’s work being on ubuweb, or maybe selections on YouTube (let’s all chime in and say “BUT OF COURSE THE FULL WEIGHT OF THE WORK WILL BE DIMINISHED BY BEING SO READILY AVAILABLE” or something to that effect). I was hoping to find some work of hers online to share with you, but for the moment, all I can do is try to summarize. Which seems incredibly silly with a work like this.
*This makes complete sense when she documents the show’s introduction, which shows Baker’s head wreathed in points of light.
UPDATE: This blog gets a lot of hits for people looking for Anne Charlotte Robertson, but this post doesn’t really do her work justice. Here is an interview with ACR herself.
THE McKIBBEN LURE
December 13, 2009So I went to check out a loft on Wednesday, and I kind of knew when I was in trouble when I learned that the listing I was checking on had already been occupied, but they had one just like it.
You know, one that wasn’t on Craigslist. Because why would it be there, where you could hold it up to some kind of scrutiny?
But the agent seemed like a really nice guy and wasn’t pushy about anything. Of course, he didn’t provide an address, saying “I’ll give you instructions when you get to the Montrose stop.”
This was not a good omen. But so few omens are good in New York real estate.
So as I begin following the agent’s instructions over the phone, on some very dark streets, it occurs to me that “Hey, this is kind of near the McKibben lofts,” and I think about saying so, but I can’t quite remember why that name sticks out in my brain – - was it something bad? – - when he says, “And the address is 480 McKibben.” And then I remember.
To call the McKibben lofts notorious doesn’t seem fair. They’re not sinister. They may or may not have or had a bedbug problem. One of the lofts had its address spontaneously adjusted overnight. But what does seem fair is what the New York Times (cited here from the Huffington Post) describe as:
. . . a landing pad for hundreds of postcollegiate creative types yearning to make it as artists, and live like them too, in today’s New York.
Actually, I don’t think that’s particularly fair, if anything, it’s a bit unkind to non-established artists (which covers almost all of them). But it does give you an idea of who’s at McKibben. Or maybe you should click this link, to see some of the most predictable hipster photographs that are probably right now in your mind’s eye, but which are probably not as interesting as what’s on LATFH.
The NYT notes that residency is typically one year. The spontaneous rooftop parties might have to do with that.
I ended up not going in. I don’t know if you have to roll around on Star Wars – themed blankets to catch a bedbug, or if they can just descend from the ceiling and drop down your shirt collar. Similarly, I don’t know if you sign a lease for McKibben, or if they just give you something to drink, and you wake up six months later, shirtless in skinny jeans and covered in glitter, with #480 written on your forehead in pink frosting. And you’re wondering why you’re wearing sunglasses in the dark and who the naked guy playing the saxophone over tape loops of a howler monkey is. I don’t know, and I’m not finding out.
Well, not today anyway.
WHAT’S THAT FLAG TO THE RIGHT OF THIS POST?
December 11, 2009
The tiny flag on the upper right-hand corner of my mac is probably the only thing that reminds me that I am an American with a computer, with an American keyboard layout.
And, when read in sequence with the other symbols, it looks like I’m against marijuana, that it’s time to tell someone to back up my computer, that I’m pro-Bluetooth, and that, lastly I’m an American with a Computer.
But it’s a tiny, tiny flag. So I blew it up, that we might see its many – - well, err, few, but still important – - pixels.
And then, inspired by Michael Bell-Smith’s From Now this Blog is Going to be Called, I linked it to a Google search. Right now, the lead American with a Computer is Leonard M. Adleman, who www.britannica.com describes as “the first successful example of DNA computing“. But that could change. And we’ll be ready to find out, with our handy pixelated-flag button to the right of this post, and all future posts.
TODAY’S GCHAT WITH MY BROTHER
December 9, 2009
DEPENDS ON YOUR DEFINITION OF IMMUNITY
December 7, 2009Years from now, as we make our own goddamn cereal for our family, and it takes forever, and let’s just remember that this particular box of cereal and think about how these little cartoon mountebanks would say just about anything at any time to get into our homes.
I think this casts a fair amount of light on why kids usually prefer the monster or animal addicted to a completely non-nutritional cereal than to, say, the Cheerios yuppies, or these three guys.
It’s the mascot that says, “Listen: I have a habit to support. You buy this sugar cereal and I will try to steal it from you, because I am an addict. That’s who I am. You might see a frog or rabbit, a bear or a Co-Co bird, but that’s who I was. I am now just a creature that dreams night and day of a product made by Nabisco or some such cereal company. It is loaded with sugar and makes me act crazy. Each time, the rewards are fewer. But it does not pretend that it will protect me from disease or boost my immunity. That’s a preposterous claim for a cereal manufacturer.”
OBLIGATORY CHRISTMAS POST
December 6, 2009
The Übermidget hasn’t been updated in about four years, but I think the Christmas 2005 special issue still holds up. I wrote holiday songs for it, most of which I can still remember the arrangements for, except for “Rudolphio” which is more of a Ken Nordine kind of spoken word thing.
