21.7.06

A couple of weekends ago I went to the National Gallery. Mostly to see the building, which I ride by most days. Is that wrong? It's full of light and glass but the corridors take ages to walk across. And the art was... not so inspiring. Traditional. But for one thing. Shards of this piece stuck in my brain and I can't shake them off.

Eve Sussman's 89 Seconds in Alcazar recreates an iconic Velazquez painting, often called the best work of Western painting. Mathematical formulas let art historians dissect the painting to show its mastery of geometry and measurable visual rhythm.

I loved this video. It treated the painting as both a work (a job, an effort by a man) and as a tiny point in the larger expanse of life.

From the bright exposure of the Modern Gallery, you enter a room that is completely dark. It takes more than thirty seconds for your eyes to readjust themselves. Against the 15-foot wall is projected a dwarf stoking a fire. Then whispering. Then a little girl in a ridiculous wedding-cake of a dress. Then the famous painting crystallizes for an instant. But the dog rolls onto its back. The painter moves his brush. People move on.

"Capturing the enticing mystery of Las Meninas, [Sussman] lets us glimpse the intricate dance of chance that might have led up to this moment. In place of Velázquez's horizontal quarters and vertical sevenths, Sussman parses human relationships. A chamberlain whispers to the king; a dwarf tends the fire; a lady-in-waiting bows to the queen. Instead of Velázquez's triangles within triangles, we get groupings that form, dissolve, and re-form as if by accident, design, or some implacable royal protocol. In the absence of Velázquez's luscious brushwork, we get the velvety atmosphere of high-definition video. Finally, in addition to mimicking the multiple yet equal focal points of Velázquez, Sussman takes you into the room in the Alcázar, the Spanish summer royal palace, where these 11 people and one dog converged that day in 1656."
--- The Village Voice

Oh my god. Before you die of pretentiousness, hear me out. This video rocks.

14.7.06

More Canada Day adventures to come, but first...

101 in 1001

A to-do list of 101 things in 1001 days. That's quite a long time, but I've got to get cracking on this list. More will be added to my ever-evolving striving...


1. Trans Siberian Express. This has been my dream for at least 5 years. I want to go from the hot and dirty Communist Beijing to St. Petersburg heavy with history. Anria and I will definitely do this by 2008. I want to drink from Samovars and have soup dumplings along the Grea Wall.

2. Attend a stitch n' bitch in Ottawa. They have a great one called Spins and Needles where crafty ladies and boys meet up and share punk crafts. I'll be there. Hopefully they won't mock my needlepoint.

3. Freelance 10 articles.

4. Try a different (new) vegetable every week. Also: go to Farmer's Markets and see what's in season.

5. Get a massage and lose my fear of being pummeled to death. I've only had them in Thailand where... painful! I hate massages but am willing to change my mind.

6. Keep my bedroom floor uncluttered for 2 weeks. Consecutively. My parents are chuckling ruefully with this one. It CAN be done.

7. Rock climbing.

8. Speak French more fluently. By more I mean at all.

9. Throw a frisbee better. Stop hitting people immediately to my left, and actually toss the frisbee where it's supposed to go.

10. See Lenin's embalmed body before he totally decomposes or is buried.

11. Learn how to put on makeup.

12. Cooking classes.

13. Hold a full-time job. Not sure if I can complete this in 1001 days, what with my enduring wanderlust.

14. Visit California. So many people I love are there, along with citrus and beaches and fresh fruit and the sun. Get a tan and call it Rodeo Drive (like yee haw! rodeo). See movie stahs.

15. Reconnect with 3 friends. My friends have scattered across the earth -- I want to keep in touch with them. Don't let laziness win!

16. Make an earrings-holder. So they don't just fall to the bottom of my purse and get dented by the purse gods.

17. Buy sexy boots for winter. I love wearing skirts, but it gets to 25-below. Maybe this will help.

18. Blog twice a week. Don't worry about words falling out of your head, you'll have something to say.

19. Fight the need to own nothing. It won't kill me to buy a lamp or a couch. Stuff is not always an anchor holding you back.

10.7.06

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CANADA!!!

Woo. Yeeeah. All right, I know it was last week but a lady updates when the whimsy takes her. I don't play by no 'calendar rules'. That's why I carry a sundial and celebrate the solstice. Don't let those Gregorians tell you what to do. [Yes I got too much sun this weekend. How did you know?]

Pretend it's last week. Denise and Andria came to visit *happy dance*. It was a glorious time of parades and walking and hot dogs and
Sadly my cotton candy search went unfulfilled. Every crap merchant in the land descended on Capital City, yet I could not find a pink cloud of sugar to save my life. Now I'm jonesing for the pink stuff.


This one time! at Commie Camp! we had a carnival. Kids were split up into colour teams (remember it was unquestionably easy to have a Tie-dye team?). They completed tasks for rewards of fake paper money, "Zoonies". I think it was to teach us about the illusion of monetary value. At the end of the day, we were left with soggy coloured paper that was worth less than tech stocks. So lesson learned. Anywhoo, when I was a counsellor, I was entrusted with the duty of working the candy floss machine. Oh I was up for it. Spun sugar all day. When we ran out of paper cones, we used dirty sticks from the forest. This is what happens when parents entrust their babies to 16 year-old communists. At dusk, the machine was about to leave me forever. So I churned out 4 garbage bags full of cotton candy. To hide in my cabin and not share with the other(because I'm a terrible socialist). Later that night when it poured rain into our leaky log cabins, I barely regretted the sugar theft. Morning found me lying in bed like Ewen MacGregor in Trainspotting - crazy-eyed and shuddering. When that baby fell off the ceiling I tossed the cotton candy into the rain and vomited outdoors like the good lord intended. Stay away from County Fairs and Theme Parks is my advice to the kids. Stay away! Or the pink siren will get you too.

27.6.06


I laughed til I stopped: Here's the winner of 2006 Sonoma-Marin Fair World's Ugliest Dog Contest.

ARCHIE

Here’s Archie, my ugly dog. One thing I always hear is “What is that?” and “Are you sure?” whenever I tell people he’s a Chinese crested. I know when people think of Chinese crested dogs they think of the champions with flowing locks and lithe prancing bodies. Even Chinese crested owners are a little taken aback when they find out one of their precious babies could someday evolve into the hairless sausage I have at the end of my leash.

I was lured into taking Archie home when I worked for a local animal shelter. I thought it would be temporary, but when my husband saw Archie it was love at first sight. The shelter gave me $10 for keeping him.

Now when we go out my husband carries Archie in his arms like a baby. When we’re in the pet food store people often think we’re waiting to see the vet in hopes of curing some terrible dog disease. They offer up sympathies “Is it cancer? Will he be okay?” They seem offened when I tell them we’re here for some bacon strips.

In the winter we put a little sweater on him to keep him warm. One time a woman thought my husband was carrying a baby and came up to look at it. She screamed when she saw Archie. I laughed.

People aren’t sure how to pet Archie. With no hair he doesn’t offer up the proper tactile experience. They rub their hand down his back and then look at their palm to make sure a little ugly didn’t rub off and stick to it. I’ve seen a lot of hand sanitizer used when people think my back is turned.

Little kids tend to throw rocks at Archie. Strangers feel no shame looking casually at him and exclaiming “What an ugly dog.” So I figure he must have a shot.

21.6.06


Things I've enjoyed on teh internets recently:

A bit of sports media folklore: in a Scottsdale bar, at some undefined time in the mid-90s, a man was hitting on a woman wearing leather pants. He was quickly cockblocked, however, when ESPN anchor Chris Berman walked by and said to the woman, “You’re with me, leather.” She immediately got up and followed Berman out the door. The story was sent to ball-loving Deadspin and has since become a favorite Deadspin non-sequitor catchphrase. Hell, they even made a t-shirt for it, wildly popular amongst all the men who still collect baseball cards. Everyone was happy.
And then yesterday, everything changed. On MTV’s screaming-girl staple TRL, VJ Damien Fahey wore the “You’re with me, leather” shirt, noting that it was his favorite pick-up line.


Also, the most macabre USB stick ever. This Marie Antoinette of the under-5 set is creepy as all get out. I prefer the one shaped like a rubber duck. Or just print out your entire hard drive and carry it around. You will be a happy man.

20.6.06

Though I've just moved to a new city, I'm already restless. A lot of us who lived abroad find the hardest part of coming back isn't necessarily the sudden wealth of choices or the rat race standards of our hometowns. Rather, it's the flatness of life in a place where we know what to expect. Tony Bourdain is a good chef and a macho dude chef who travels the world. His show on the Food Network was sometimes off-puttingly masculine, but always awash in colour and throbbing with a pulse. Here's what he has to say:


"Something really happened to me in Vietnam. I think I instinctively knew it, and I think a lot of people around me knew it, but Asia ruined me for going back. Vietnam in particular ruined my whole life. My expectations for what I see when I open my eyes in the morning, or even little things like the condiments on the table when I sit down. That bar just went so high and so different that there was no going back.


There’s a passage in the Salman Rushdie book The Ground Beneath Her Feet that talks about people who don’t belong to any one place and have to keep moving, and reading it was like feeling, oh, I’m not the only one.


It was a sad moment. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life, but it was also a sad one. It was a selfish moment. I’ve talked elsewhere about there are times in your life… I’ll use the example of you’re standing alone in the desert, and you see the most incredible sunset you’ve ever seen and your first instinct is to turn to your left or right and say, “Wow, do you see that?” Okay, there’s no one there, what do you do? Next, where’s the camera? Look through the viewfinder and you realize you know, what you see through that little box is not what you’re experiencing. There comes this terrible moment when you realize well, this is for me. There is no sharing this."


I find it almost painful to go back over the photos from Japan, Thailand, and Shanghai. Not so for previous adventures. That Japan time was so amazing and fragile. My first real trip abroad was to Europe when I was 20. I backpacked around for endless months, half of the time by myself. And I learned everything about my character. How far I'm willing to take chances, how long I can walk before tiring, how many artifacts I can suck up into memory (hint: a damn lot. Keep me away from museums if you want to hang out).

So I guess what I'm feeling lately is a yearning to find somewhere I really want to live forever, or for a good long time. But I'll sample the urban buffet first.

13.6.06

Abbreviations on Parade and I'm the drum majorette

My work is a loving display of the All-Acronym Channel. And I cannot understand a damn thing anyone is saying. Just received a straight-faced request asking me to check with the ADM about the GOC's position on UNGASS w/r/t NNPO and then write a DEC about it. I just saluted and walked away. The first week on a job, for me, means laying low and learning the office culture. I'm trying not to seem incompetent. Which is hard.


The best part of my newfound employment is that I get to create web content for [censored] Minister and the International [censored]. Sadly, I can't say another word. Hope you're intrigued and not angry. Radio silence must commence about the job. It's going to be hard ignoring what I do for 8 hours a day. But I've taped my blogging hand to my face and you'll not hear another word about it.



For some reason I still love Ottawa. My bike path to work goes along the river! I swerve to avoid vehicularly homiciding Canada geese and their fuzzy little babies. I aim straight for the douches in their matching helmet, windbreaker, pantclip combo. It's not too hot yet. I've totally started yoga, brah. A bear cub was on the loose in the downtown this morning. Good tidings, all.