October 8, 2010

Have a Happy Day!

My mom recently told me that prior to the early 1970s, no one ever said “Have a nice day” to one another.  I’m not sure I believe this, because I find it hard to believe that people did not use this parting salutation prior to the 70s.  But according to my mom, they only said things like, “see you soon”,  ”thank you”, “good-bye” and “take care”.  I should probably add that my mother hates when people tell her to “have a nice day” – she finds this ‘pushy’ and ‘presumptuous’.  As she likes to say, “What if I want to have a crappy day?”

After doing a little research, I think she might be confusing this with the saying “Have a Happy Day” and the advent of the smiley face button fad which happened in the late 1960s and peaked in the early 70s.   Apparently two fad designers were looking for a peace symbol-like item with more general appeal and thus was born the insipid pre-frontal lobotomy smiley face and the HAVE A HAPPY DAY salutation that so annoys my mom…

 

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October 4, 2010

Homage to Josef Albers

I admit, it’s not every person who sits around wondering … how could I pay homage to Josef Albers? But there are some of us out there.

For  Francesco Vezzoli the answer is to needlepoint Albers’ color studies.

I’m not really sure how to classify Vezzoli as an artist except to say he’s wildly ironic, and terribly eclectic. I do love the idea of his  non fragrance GREED – which came complete with a Polanski directed commercial.

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August 15, 2010

Sleep

17th Century poet, John Milton once asked, “What hath night to do with sleep?” This is a question I can completely relate to mostly because sometimes weeks go by and I get barely a few hours each night.  However unlike Milton I’m not blind, and I don’t have to sleep in vermin infested bedding so maybe it’s not a fair comparison.  It’s not that I can’t sleep due to anxiety or something like that.  It’s just that sleep wants no part of me.  Most nights I feel like a jilted girlfriend.  Thankfully there’s cable.  I spend a lot of time watching movies.  I tell myself it’s a good thing.  It’s quiet and I can focus.  Sometimes I watch without sound.  They say this is a good way to learn to direct, though I don’t want to direct but it’s good to be prepared. Out of Sight is a big late night favorite these days. Everything about that movie makes me want to move to Detroit and become a corrections officer.  I love the soundtrack, the lighting, the weather, and of course the love scene where George and JLo peel off their clothes. Soderbergh admits it is an homage to the sex scene in Don’t Look Now but frankly I think it’s better.

I saw Don’t Look Now at LACMA one Friday night and it scared the hell out of me. Based on a Daphne du Maurier story, it’s about a couple who go to Italy in order to reconnect after a tragedy and end up being stalked by a dwarf in a red coat.  Funnily enough, the name Daphne Du Maurier always reminds me of French author Guy de Maupassant who was, in my mind, a man obsessed with two things: moustaches and the ugliness of the Eiffel Tower. Granted, it’s not the prettiest structure around (it’s no Chrysler) but studying how it swayed in the wind expanded the entire field of aerodynamics, set standards for tests used by NASA and affected everything from airplanes to curveballs.  Sure it was ugly, but it possessed a larger significance that the mustachioed Maupassant failed to see.

But what is the larger significance of my lack of sleep and when did sleep become such an issue anyway? Continue reading →

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August 12, 2010

How Picasso Explains Me

Sometimes I feel like this:  

And other times I feel like this:

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August 3, 2010

Popular

No matter how often I try to deny it, all of life is high school to one varying degree or another.  And like high school, the world is a pretty ruthless place, so popularity can be a good safety net.  At the very least, it affords you some benevolence from your brethren. The trouble is to be popular, you must appeal to the widest possible audience. Popular comes frompopulus, which comes from polis all of which suggests to me throngs of adoring people.   Still if something is popular I am almost always dubious because popularity is fleeting.  Pretty girls get fat, music falls out of style, fashions change.   It takes something very memorable to transcend popular, like a Coco Chanel suit, and even then I don’t want to wear one.

Let’s consider religion, it’s had a tremendously popular run since time began. Actually I just read that Indulgences are back.  For those not in the club, indulgences are a way to buy less time in purgatory.  You see, even though you can repent for your sins, there’s still the sticky issue of purgatory.  During an Indulgence, you can shave purgatory time by praying and making donations.   A few good offerings and you can cut your stay down by five or ten years.  Although when we’re talking about eternity, what’s a decade?

Well, maybe we should consider Philosophy.  Take Aristotle.  He was very popular, still is for that matter.  But so much of what he said was completely wrong. Continue reading →

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July 30, 2010

Reincarnation?

I was very taken with this blue violin case though I don’t know why exactly.  I also love the people on the beach dressed in (slimming) black.  I think maybe if there’s any truth to reincarnation, then I must have lived somewhere in either Northern Africa or France, during the early  1900s.  Something about things from this time period really resonate with me.

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July 29, 2010

Queenie and Me

One of the cooler things to happen to me so far this summer, was that I had the pleasure of meeting a very dramatic emu named Queenie.  I’ve never met an emu before, and my only frame of reference was the attacking emus in Dude Where’s My Car, but Queenie lived up to her name.  She was like an aging Hollywood starlet.  She would follow you around, but the moment you looked at her, she would look away.  I miss Queenie, and the somber drumbeat sound that she would make as she walked around.  Hopefully, I’ll see her again soon.

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