Psst! It seems Mr. Zellar’s blog has won the notice of a rather particular circle of British writers and poets. The Willesden Herald is a literary blog kept up by the town’s network of scribes, which includes the likes of Zadie Smith, who famously featured Willesden in her novel White Teeth. Scroll down the page to the entry titled “The Golden Willy Awards 2006.” There you’ll find Open All Night listed under “Best creative writing.” And you’ll find a host of other great literary blogs, too. Happy reading!
Category: Blog Post
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Two Things Worth Mentioning
The rest of the world is at war
Everything’s ok in America as long as we have our celebrity journalism
Newsweek has a great story on how we are now losing not only in Iraq, but in Afganistan, too. It’s the cover story on their international edition.
Here in America, though, we’re more interested in someone who photographs Angelina Jolie for a living.
And, bad news for Jesus Fans in the Strib today. The headline read: Wisconsin cheese workers rubbed Buddha statue prior to Powerball win.
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An Empty Seat in the Temple Theater
My grandmother, L. Josephine Schilling, “Jo” to those who didn’t call her Mom or Grandma, passed away last week at age 89. What does this matter to anyone who reads a movie blog? Nothing, really, except to the writer of said blog, so maybe it will have a passing interest to you. For this kind lady introduced me to the movies, one of many wonderful things she gave me over the years. My father later whipped that love into the near-frenzy it became in later years, when, as a sullen teen, I would eventually distance myself cruelly from my Grandma. I wanted to see The Hunger more than Harvey, the De Palma Scarface over the Hawks version. No Grandmother worth her salt would sit and listen to so much cursing and endure such onscreen gore. And I wasn’t going to waste my precious teenage years with any more Capra films. I was better than that. Now I know I’m the worse for not spending the time with her.
This last week found the family in Saginaw to attend to her funeral. Our family is haunted by movies: my father and I spent our time with the usual banter, over Truffaut, over L’Atalante, and, inexplicably, debating the merits of Talladega Nights. Grandma had piles of John Wayne films, and I remember last year buying her Red River, and what a chore it was trying to find a version on VHS. I still remember being shocked to the core that my cousin asked for and received Queen of the Damned for Christmas one year, and I’m not concerned with its pagan message, either. One of my aunts has a very personal, obviously distant and fantastical relationship with Mel Gibson (though she’s cooled on him lately). Everyone on that side of the family is daffy for movies, and seeing them together isn’t as static as you might think. Arsenic and Old Lace was the nonpareil, however, and I can’t forget seeing it on a snowy night at the Temple, with fresh popcorn, creaky seats and the wheezing organ. The gales of laughter that came out of Grandma and my Aunt Mary were almost as hilarious as what unfolded on the torn screen. Grandma used to flip over Cary Grant and Arsenic, cackling for days afterwards and fancying herself one of the murderous biddies (that was her term). We would talk about that movie for days, us kids at times pretending to be the old man who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, charging up and down the stairs as he did (and shouting “Charge!” at the top of our lungs). Or Peter Lorre or Raymond Massey, the creepy serial-killing brother of Cary Grant’s Mortimer. And their house, right next to the cemetery! Why, it was just like Grandma’s house… without the dead people next door (though we could pretend).
Later, I would come to dismiss that movie as cloying and unwatchable and beneath me. If someone has a time machine to loan me, to go back and kick that pompous ass in the behind, I’d sure appreciate it.
In the afternoon following the service, pops and I drove around Saginaw, a town that has somehow managed to look worse in the fifteen years since I’ve wandered its streets. The Temple has been saved by some local multimillionaires, and it is a gorgeous thing, with new red-velvet seats, a restored organ, and the scent of mildew has been driven out. But not showing movies much anymore. Dad said it looked better than when he was a kid. But it’s among blocks of dying buildings: who goes to see movies in a ghost town? Ghosts?
The Green Acres Cinema is closed, and the Court Street Theater has one 7:00 showing of a two-buck feature, and the Quad, our mall theater, is also a second-run house. And worse: the mighty neon bunny, the logo of the Jack Rabbit Beans silo, is now dark. The rabbit used to greet us as we left the Temple for the warmth of my Grandma’s home.
I haven’t a clue where I’m going with this piece, other than to say that a movie isn’t just something to waste a couple of hours, but it can be as rewarding an experience as, well, the proverbial baseball game with the proverbial father and son (though I enjoyed that experience… with the same Grandma). Just do these simple things: listen to the laughter that surrounds you in a favorite film and remember the feeling of the hand you held in the dark. Take the time to see the movies you don’t want to see that make another person happy, especially if that person is your mother or father or grandparent.
Even if it’s Arsenic and Old Lace.
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May I have another?
The newly released October issue provides today’s much-needed dose of inspiration. Right there on page 55, a one David de Young is quoted (by me) as saying that the Hexagon Bar is a mighty fine place for catching the newest ‘n most interesting bands. I credit this to the work of the club’s booker, the brilliant Mr. Christopher Dorn, who doubles as the famous frontman of the 90s indie pop powerhouse The Beatifics and triples as a walking reference library for all things bubblegum and dream pop. He’s also a good friend of mine.
In any case, tonight the Hexagon and HOMOCORE Minneapolis host the Austin, Texas-based band The TunaHelpers–a puppet-wielding, prom dress-wearing, all-girl trio of fairy rockers. On a related note, also from the October issue: read our interview with Joan Jett, who weighs in on the dwindling presence of women in rawk.
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Chow Time
What was once a kicky, quirky food magazine is now a kicky, quirky website. Chow was bought by the guys at CNet, about the same time they decided to re-work my favorite Chowhounds site. Now the two sites are working together to bring fun and un-stuffy food articles to eaters. With pieces on how to make your own snackie cakes, the rituals of absinthe, and a recipe for watermelon juice with fleur de sel, I like like love it.
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From totally geek to totally chic…
Attention theater geeks: if tonight’s Ivey Awards are anything like last year, we’re in for a hot, hot evening (or, at the very least, a hot, hot after-party). Now, I’ve been privy to some speculation about who and what will win these second annual Ivey awards. But who cares, really… We’ve got more important things on our minds, right? Such as what to wear.
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I Believe It's Raining All Over The World
We are here and now.
Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine.
I can at best report only from my own wilderness. The important thing is that each man possess such a wilderness and that he consider what marvels are to be observed there.
—Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey
‘Whole thing works on gravity. Heavy falls and the light flows away.’
–From William Kittredge’s “The Van Gogh Field,” in which a farmer explains a thresher
Dear Eddie,
It’s raining here, but that’ll come as no surprise to you, brother. The cold rain that camps out over these parts this time of year always did put you in a black frame of mind.
Your long silence has become like a bad tooth to me, Ed. The older I get the more it bothers me, and about now, just when I start hauling in the split wood and building big fires in the stove, is when I find myself brooding over our old disagreements. A fire in a damp, dark house on a rainy night can be a tough thing to stare into through the long hours.
The old man never did come to terms with what was eating you back in those bad days, and I don’t expect you ever thought he would. It might, however, surprise you to know that I feel like I’ve grown somehow closer to you in the years since you went away.
I’ll be square with you, Edster old boy, I’ve had my fill of plenty of things. Maybe I’ve finally had that crisis of faith you were always predicting, but all I know is that I’ve lost a good deal of steam over the last several years. I’m old, of course, and haven’t been in the best of health. That’ll certainly make a man mull some, and a lot of the old crowd is dead now, which only makes this sleepy little place feel even emptier.
Do you remember watching the thresher at work when we were boys, Eddie? It’s a powerful and damn useful metaphor in this part of the country. I like to imagine that even as a youngster I could see something symbolic in the steady, relentless work of that machine. I believe it was the thresher that put the fear of God in me, and it’ll likely disappoint you to know that I’ve never quite managed to be shook of it, even if there are increasingly days where there’s as much pure puzzlement as fear in my attitude towards the Creator. Puzzlement and fear, and also –I can’t help it, Ed– respect.
I know this is one area in which the way we’ve always seen the world strongly diverges. I remember, believe me, some of our arguments, and some of your dust-ups with pa. And I do wish from time to time (and I guess, if I’m going to be honest, more and more frequently) that I had a bit of your cocksureness about the meaninglessness of things.
The problem is, though, that I tend to find everything somehow meaningful, even if I can’t ever quite seem to divine to my satisfaction exactly what that meaning is.
Still, I believe it’s there all the same, Eddie. This place hasn’t managed to beat that notion out of me. And I do believe that things happen for a reason, and that even seemingly senseless tragedies have a significance that often eludes us.
What, I wonder, is more significant and more deserving of our careful attention than a terrible injustice or tragedy? And might that significance be reason enough to justify many of the things we can’t understand, and give some credence to the things we persist in believing?
Significance, of course, is a difficult thing to find and make sense of in the midst of despair, but surely that shouldn’t have to mean it’s not there.
I don’t know, Eddie, that thought –if, in fact, there’s a clear thought in there– gives me a sort of peace, and these days even a sort of peace has become precious to me.
I hope this finds you, brother, and finds you well. I’ve been thinking about you a good deal. That’s all I really wanted to say. Plenty of the memories of our years together are good enough that I pray I won’t have to part with a single one of them in the time that I have left.
I also pray that you’ve managed to hang onto a few of them as well, and that they give you as much comfort as they give me.
–A letter found in an old copy of Francis Parkman’s Pioneers of France in the New World
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How Kennedy Does It (The basic technology of lying on the website)
Minnesota Republican Watch today has a post detailing the few lines of computer code used to change Mark Kennedy’s website to express his phony outrage at Amy Klobuchar.
It’s funny how pathetic Kennedy and his people are, and how easy it is to puncture their lies.
When is the Strib going to cover this, btw?
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Of Corn Mazes and Goats
The barn at Deer Lake Orchards.Suddenly, the weekends belong to the apple orchards. They’ve figured out it’s quite a business, luring familys with hot cider, mini-donuts, jumping goats and corn mazes. My cynical side bemoans the crowds and trampled fields and toddlers with farm cats in a love-strangle. But I am renewed when, during the wagon ride around the farm, I see pampered kids get mucky while learining about flax seed and amaranth and how corn goes from field to movie theater. If they can connect their caramel apples to a place where you can smell straw and see pink baby pigs, we’re doing something right.
There are more listed on the Apple Journal, including my personal favorite Fall Harvest Orchard in Delano where we get to feed the cows.
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The Dark Fantastic
Again, it’s a big weekend for theater: For one, Gatz is running… It’s a production I had promised myself I’d see, way back when the Walker was first announcing its performing arts season. This was to be an exercise in self-betterment, or so I thought. But now that the show’s here, however, I can’t quite bring myself to sit through it. The adult ADD persists, despite my best efforts to medicate…
Another biggie: Jeune Lune just re-opened its take on Moliere’s The Miser, which is a terrific show. (I saw it last year.) I’m not sure if it’s been written here before, but yours truly once spent about three years of her life working for l’homme at Jeune Lune. And during that time, of course, my all-time favorite theater house devolved, on the personal spectrum of adoration, from rockstar to slave driver–as any employer would, really. But there’s no need to sully my praise with personal baggage. Jeune Lune is still among my favorites. And it’s definitely the best place to take an out-of-town guest–especially if he’s a foreigner you want to convince of your city’s cosmopolitan virtues. In fact, in some instances, Jeune Lune can make you and your city look downright exotic. For example, I was able to impress a certain Hungarian last year when I suggested we meet up to see Jeune Lune’s production of Amerika. And I almost had ‘im after that night. He sprang to his feet for the standing ovation. (And these aren’t obligatory and readily handed out according to the Hungarian standard, you know…) I even introduced him to the director after the show. But then, as it turned out, something terrible occurred, and this, it seems, left an indelible mark on the hot Hungarian’s memory of our date. He offered to walk me to my car after the show, but I couldn’t quite remember where I’d parked. I could sense the disappointment as we circled through the blocks going up and down First Street. Thanks anyway, Jeune Lune.
Addendum (added at about noon): I should also note that the Dell’Arte Company, a physical theater school and performance troupe out of Cali (and thus, loosely related to Jeune Lune), are in town this weekend to perform with Danish theater company, Jomfru Ane Teatret, in their production of The Liar: The Peer Gynt Project. It all goes down at the Ritz.