Jan 30, 2010

Saturday Morning Notes---











—These maps.

—This house in Palm (a rental, and possibly decorated by Billy Baldwin?).

—Peter Watkins' Edvard Munch, which I started two weeks ago and, watching in fits and starts, finally finished late yesterday. Here is a small segment, the only one I could find.

Jan 29, 2010

Okay Aquarius

I'm pretty slow and non-invested about the blogosphere. I like writing here, but I make no effort to promote (the shame of it!). And I don't read very many blogs consistently; beyond the links Ma and Pa send me and some of the usual (and awful) suspects, there is really only ever Michael K's Dlisted, playground for the English language. We're always stealing from him, or trying hard not to. Today I can't help it...a list of January 29th birthdays, like whoa:

Oprah Winfrey (56)
Athina Onassis (25)
Isabel Lucas (25)
Adam Lambert (28)
Jonny Lang (29)
Andrew Keegan (31)
Sara Gilbert (35)
Kelly Packard (35)
Heather Graham (40)
Edward Burns (42)
Greg Louganis (50)
Ann Jillian (60)
Tommy Ramone (61)
Tom Selleck (65)
Katharine Ross (70)
John Forsythe (92)
But look! Here's Lee Goldberg's blog!

Jan 28, 2010

much dance 2001

Best Thing Going For Thursday at 5:30

This post about Italian physicality. Delicious.

Trial Time
















So this is as pointless a venture as last week's lampooning of New York Magazine's Snooki-hating fashion blogger--

Today's New York Times travel section includes a feature (and mostly painful slideshow) on 'hip Memphis,' and I feel the need to address some probs-lems/the naff whole.

Times' staffer, Melena Ryzik, author of a Times' blog called--OH MY G-D--The Carpetbagger (it's about red carpets and people but still), flew down to Memphis to perform/report her awkward, condescending cultural carpetbagging. Yuck.

I am pleased that our friend Dwayne Butcher's blog is linked. And it's a damn trip to read about that warty troll who glares from behind her pitchers of PBR at The Lamplighter (which we call by its full name, btw) in any newspaper, let alone the "of-record" one (and, just to clarify my name-calling, she's only a troll to girls, actually smiles at boys, which might explain the pins at Goner, though really, who are we to guess at the motives of Goner employees [c'est impossible]).

The article begins with Elvis, or a stated attempt to avoid him (which is probably why she never mentions that Elvis lost his virginity at Ernestine & Hazel's). The title of the piece starts: "Roll Over Elvis." This is nuts. And telling. Ryzik leads with the assertion that she is "cool" (in the most cloying, deaf Gen-Xer-y way) and down-with-locals because she wants to look beyond Elvis, or ignore him altogether. It's true that Elvis is "the lead" for most tourists to the Bluffs, the reaction most folks have to my volunteered hometown--

"Where are you from?"
"Memphis, Tennessee."
"Oh....Elvis!"

--For good reason. Elvis is the tops. She writes,

IT’S hard to shake Elvis in Memphis. His pompadoured, crooning visage peers out from all corners, from jukeboxes to diner counters. But the King was nowhere to be found at Electrocity, a semi-legal warehouse party that was recently held in an unheated garage in the city’s energetic Midtown neighborhood.

Jesus. I grew up in Midtown, a large swathe of the city that contains multiple neighborhoods, some quite sleepy. (And I can't touch that rave party. Y'all know how ridiculous its inclusion is. And Nocturnal [joke/hell]?! And Mollie Fontaine [yuppie downtown lifestylze mess]?! And Odessa [iffy amoeba of an art space that throws parties...I can't].)

Anyway, in Memphis, I saw Elvis everywhere. When I drove to and from the airport. When I, as stated, had a beer at Ernestine's second floor; I felt him most of all in one of their particularly creepy, cokey bathrooms (claw-footed tub rusting in the corner). When I went to school each morning in Overton Park. When I headed downtown past Baptist Memorial (now, regretfully, demolished). This list will get dull fast....the thing is, he permeates wonderfully, not through kitsch so much as ghostly imprint.
I've been to Graceland some 12 or 13 times, and cried too, in the Beautiful Meditation Garden or in front of Gladys' lavender poodle-motifed bedroom, cried for a folk hero whose story is so much about America (Egg got it).

And a lot of what Ryzik talks about, dives and juke joints, existed before Elvis, alongside Elvis. He might beef with a contemporary ambivalence toward sharp-dressing, but that's about it. He knew all about Memphis' soul and strangeness, its scrappy accessibility. Other stuff, The Cove and the Hi-Tone and Deli, new or newish spots, contain very little to provoke. They serve fried food and booze and bands play. What's this article about again?

The Bucc (opened a decade+ before Elvis passed), I've mentioned here before. It's my most favorite bar in the world, mine and Pillow's Friday afternoon office. It is incredibly loose and warm, uniquely so. And gross and rough too. What Melena Ryzik and her paper did not comprehend, beyond the peeling paint and torn up vinyl booths, is what a visiting friend once summed up with a buzzed, thrilling declaration, "There's no rules here!" It's a thing I've felt in New York as well, though NY's version is about a chilled carelessness, the BIG and LOST of the place. In Memphis, unbounded sensations spring from a dangerous slowness, a haze, a shared state of drunkeness and decrepitude and empty lots, plenty violence happening "someplace else" (preoccupying our law enforcement), death impending (no joke).

Of course, this is all selective, there are manicured blocks and nice schools, churches and shops too.

It's just that Memphis is my home of homes, home of hearts, and it is very beautiful and very difficult. I take it seriously, and nothing sounds as grave or complicated as it ought to in a foolish Times puff piece. I wish they wouldn't bother blundering all over stuff.

View of a Room


salon in the Palazzo Barbaro, Venice (decor. 1797)

From John Kent's Venice:

Ca' Barbaro. A parade of the famous passed through this house after the Curtis family of Boston acquired it in the 19thC. Monet and Sargent each had a studio here; Browning gave recitations; Henry James stayed to write 'The Aspern Papers' and used the house as a setting for 'The Wings of the Dove'; Cole Porter "opened in Venice" with a brief stay in 1923, before moving on to open what Diaghilev called "an idiotic nightclub on a boat moored outside the Salute." The house is really two buildings, the second added in 1694 to accommodate a ballroom - a pressing need.

Jan 27, 2010

A dyspeptic update: (though any news source is more reliable than this one and you've probably already heard about it from one of thems) the fishy, almost wholly Bloomberg appointed Panel for Educational Policy voted to move forward with those school closings last night. The four votes against the motion came from Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens and Manhattan councilmen, the lone figures not appointed by our mayor. Thousands of students and teachers and parents showed up to voice grievances. The meeting/vote was adjourned around 4 A.M...also, here's a very clear Times piece from yesterday, that paints an only marginally dire picture.

Jan 26, 2010

Verses

OK GO, "This Too Shall Pass"


You know you can't keep lettin' it get you down
And you can't keep draggin' that dead weight around.
If there ain't all that much to lug around,
Better run like hell when you hit the ground.

When the morning comes.
When the morning comes.

You can't stop these kids from dancin'.
Why would you want to?
Especially when you're already gettin' yours.
'Cause if your mind don't move and your knees don't bend,
well don't go blamin' the kids again.

When the morning comes.
When the morning comes.

When the morning comes.
When the morning comes.

When the morning comes.
When the morning comes.

Let it go, this too shall pass.
Let it go, this too shall pass.

Let it go, this too shall pass.
(You know you can't keep lettin' it get you down. No, you can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

Let it go, this too shall pass.
(You know you can't keep lettin' it get you down. No, you can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

Hey!

Let it go, this too shall pass.
(You know you can't keep lettin' it get you down. No, you can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

When the morning comes.
(You can't keep lettin' it get you down. You can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

When the morning comes.
(You can't keep lettin' it get you down. No, you can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

When the morning comes.
(You can't keep lettin' it get you down. You can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

When the morning comes.
(You can't keep lettin' it get you down. No, you can't keep lettin' it get you down.)

When the morning comes!

Jan 25, 2010

nerds

Have y'all ever read comments on Street Carnage?
....this one too.....Mon-zay vomz-ay.