Engineer's Daughter

lucubrate

Black board, white chalk, wrong answer, from Eduard Mendelevich Krimmer's Tools and Other Things, 1928 (Russia).  Also see the sublime cover Krimmer did for Kipling's Just So Story Why the Whale Has Such a Big Throat right here. 

the fields

My original plans for last night featured the Bonfire Madigan show at Cafe Du Nord, but earlier this week when I was hanging out with Sasha at the Part Time Punks Homosexuals show at Bottom of the Hill we ran into George from Club Sandwich and he reminded us of yesterday's Blank Dogs show at 21 Grand.  So after a couple hours spent in mid-'60s Paris courtesy of Godard's glorious 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle we headed back to Oakland to immerse ourselves in the noise and I left the cello music for another night.  Aquarius has been writing voluminously about Blank Dogs for a while now and with good reason, as Mike Sniper's particular brand of fuzzed-out gloom pop is eminently addictive.  For this show he brought along a small arsenal of distortion pedals as well as four other musicians to fill out the sound, rendering my earplugs absolutely necessary.  In a happy coincidence it was also Club Sandwich's 100th show, and looking at the poster of their previous 99 events elicited firm vows to attend more of their shindigs.  There's a Grouper show coming up at the end of April, for example...

an uneven dozen broken hearts

I made my first visit to 2nd Floor Projects yesterday on the closing day of their Curt McDowell exhibition, an uneven dozen broken hearts, and I'm so glad I finally made the short trek up 25th Street.  McDowell was a prolific artist and photographer probably best known around these here parts for directing the 1975 film Thundercrack! from a script written by his close friend George Kuchar as well as for making a slew of other pornos before he died of AIDS in 1987.  The 2nd Floor show gathered some choice examples of his drawings of his alter ego Loretta as well as paintings and photocollages.  The real treat for me, however, was the old photo album that held everything from reference shots for his epic painting of the Beatles as nude cadavers to impromptu (and explicit) snaps of friends and lovers.  As the book was threatening to fall apart at any moment I carefully turned the pages and was transported back into the San Francisco that existed over three decades ago.  I must have blinked in surprise when I came upon a series of an eerily beautiful woman sitting naked in bed, gazing shyly at the camera, because the man behind me gave me a knowing smile.  "Curt was never so particular about gender."

show 116

playlist

there are demons among us

I totally blew Earth Hour tonight.  Not only did I continue watching a DVD (Bill Paxton's 2001 movie Frailty) when the clock struck 8:30 but due to the nature of said DVD I had every light in my apartment on at full blaze.  Though the production values are a bit made-for-TV-movie, Frailty is nonetheless a delightfully creepy slice of Southern Gothic complete with an axe-wielding Paxton convinced he has been charged by God to destroy demons who have disguised themselves as humans.  Matthew McConaughey plays the son who has lived to take the tale to the FBI, and he gets to deliver some major twists in the plot near the end as well.  Now I'm going to go watch a pile of Björk videos to fill my head with happy things and in the hopes that I won't have to sleep with the lights on tonight.

the most dangerous man in the world

I'm DJing tomorrow:
11am - noon PST, Sunday, March 29
KALX Berkeley 90.7fm
I'm going on after the women's basketball game, hence the 11am start time...and that's only a guess.  But I'll have time for a few songs at least, and I'll make them good ones.

Perhaps still in a state of shock from the Parkway's sudden closing Aimee and I went to see He's Just Not That Into You at the Cerrito Wednesday night, and really the less said about that hateful film the better.  Instead I highly recommend renting the DVD I saw the following night, Ronald Neame's clever 1980 film Hopscotch.  Walter Matthau stars as CIA agent Miles Kendig, who takes his job and shoves it after being reassigned to a position he doesn't want.  After threatening to publish a book full of secrets that will potentially embarrass the entire international spying community, Kendig leads his former coworkers (including a young Sam Waterston) on a merry chase around the world, aided and abetted by the always-fabulous Glenda Jackson.  As much as I love the slick, high-octane action of the recent Bourne and Bond movies, it was nice to flash back to a well-made film that, like Matthau's Kendig, doesn't take itself too seriously and is still a ton of fun.

snake eyes

Unknown photographer: Maid De'ah (daughter of a slave) c.1900 (USA).  My apologies that my posting has been a little sparse this week.  I've been recharging and refocusing post-vacation and working on a couple other projects I will link to soon.  In the meantime I give you this photograph that (intentionally or not) effectively defines race and class differences at the turn of the last century in one evocative image.  And as my daytime stroll through New York's Upper East Side last week yielded many an encounter with a woman of color wheeling a white youngster in a fancy stroller, I dare say some things are very slow to change indeed.

nyc pics

For the visual component of my recent trip to New York please enjoy the Flickr set you may find here.  That city sure does know how to treat a girl nice.

nyc 2009

Wednesday
-mental soundtrack ---> Neko Case
-all the cool kids in the Oakland Airport boarding the plane for Austin on their way to SXSW
-a little shiver of horror when I see the man next to me is reading Ayn Rand
-chatting pleasantly with my Malian SuperShuttle driver about Africa...but still lying through my teeth and saying I already have a boyfriend
-the always-awesome Chelsea Lodge
-a Samuel Smith brown ale + a mason jar stuffed with carrots, squash, beans, wheat berries and farro with pipettes of fig balsamic and Austrian pumpkin seed oil and shakers of artichoke and beet powder on the side + mushroom and bread dumplings + peanut butter mousse with blood orange and chocolate jelly and caramelized popcorn at Klee Brasserie
-the Gowanus Canal by night
-Neil deGrasse Tyson delivering a Secret Science Club lecture on Pluto at the Bell House that had the entire bar hanging on his every word
-a Czechvar and lots of adorably geeky boys
-a slice of cheese pizza on the walk home

Thursday
-mental soundtrack ---> Neutral Milk Hotel
-wishing I'd seen Natasha Richardson in Cabaret
-tea + orange juice + sour cream hazelnut waffles with warm berries at Balthazar
-stumbling into Uniqlo and stumbling back out again with a cute new dress for $20
-Sun Xun using both old Communist newspapers and his own body as canvas in two wonderful animated videos at the Drawing Center
-Ryan McGinness pushing into intensely layered paintings, sculptures and black light at Deitch Projects
-three cheese macaroni + a glass of white at Freemans, cozy in the rain
-conversing with former soldier Brian Laguardia in Jeremy Deller's It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq at the New Museum, the brand new building itself a happy addition to the neighborhood
-the joy of seeing Trevor Paglen's familiar starry satellite photography at Bellwether Gallery, and wishing I had a few extra thousand dollars lying around so I could own one
-Lisa Yuskavage's explicit painted ladies at David Zwirner that simultaneously attract and repel
-psychedelic film sets by Mika Tajima, stairwell fluorescents by Dan Flavin, dreamy early Super-8 films by Derek Jarman and a rooftop installation by Christian Holstad at X
-Yoshitomo Nara's radiantly grumpy girls at Marianne Boesky and his accompanying installation that made me weep by filling the gallery with one of my favorite Neutral Milk Hotel songs
-jumbo shrimp sauteed with vegetables in a light curry coconut sauce + a coconut pyramid with tapioca pandan sauce and a sesame twist at O Mai
-an opening in the Kitchen's gallery that instantly cemented Elodie Pong as my new favorite video artist
-then downstairs in the theater Big Art Group noisily and vigorously deconstructed our present virtual reality in their new play SOS in which they used a dizzying mix of live-edited video, hallucinatory backgrounds and animal costumes
-seeing names like Yoko Ono Lennon, Robert W. Wilson and Louise Bourgeois in the supporters section of the program
-coming home to a full hour of live Ani DiFranco on PBS

Friday
-mental soundtrack ---> Clipse
-first day of spring = tiny snowstorm!
-chocolate croissant + chai latte at Jack's Coffee
-huge exhibit on the influence of Asia on American art at the Guggenheim including some gorgeous Whistlers, Bruce Conner's Sound of Two Hand Angel and a whole room of John Cage
-Emily Jacir's evocative Hugo Boss Prize exhibit
-tartine of aged Gruyère with cornichons, sundried tomato, sliced mango and a trio of mustards + Belgian hot chocolate at Le Pain Quotidien
-at the Whitney: Jenny Holzer's gasp-inducing installations, Alex Bag's hilarious take on children's shows, a scribbled Sol LeWitt and a spectacular piece by Doug Aitken
-tea and crisps
-a glass of red + patatas bravas + tuna cakes + flash-fried sardines + a pear poached in rose at Tía Pol
-feeling like I won the lottery when my waitress spontaneously complimented my heels
-a live art battle in the basement of (Le) Poissin Rouge, though my favorite artist of the talented competing quartet, Venus, sadly did not win
-a splurge on a cab ride home and on a slice of spinach and mushroom

Saturday
-mental soundtrack ---> Jesus & Mary Chain
-the city this time appeared to be full of ancient basset hounds, or else I was just lucky and kept running into them out on their walks
-the hustle and bustle of Grand Central even first thing on a Saturday morning
-a train ride to the Botanical Garden
-lunch with a lovely view in the cafe
-the crazy orchid people (and some amazing flowers) in the great glass conservatory for the Orchid Show
-outside: bees buzzing, robins hopping and epic Henry Moore sculptures around every corner
-a veggie dog with hummus, carrots and olives + green bean "frites" + a lemonade at F & B
-Webster Hall packed to the gills with people there to watch designers make magical things happen live onstage at the Cut & Paste Digital Design Tournament
-Steve McQueen live at the IFC Center to introduce his film Hunger, which I can already say with certainty is going to be one of my films of the year

Sunday
-mental soundtrack ---> Stone Roses
-did I mention that I had a bad cold the entire trip?
-back to Klee Brasserie for a proper Viennese brunch: café au lait, orange juice, brioche, apricot preserve and butter, scrambled eggs and cheddar + warm apple strudel mit schlag
-a SuperShuttle full of Dutch and Belgian tourists
-the unavoidable temptation of the Muji store right there in Jet Blue's new Terminal 5
-this quote from Irina Reyn's What Happened to Anna K.:

The last movie Lev watched, Krzysztof Kieślowski's Red, with its alternate realities, its missed opportunities, the luminescent Irène Jacob, cemented his decision.  He would not mess with fate -- it would either be Katia or waiting, for what he did not know, but a wife he couldn't get rid of would make his life unbearable.  So when the clock finally spat out five p.m., he ran home and dressed himself entirely in black -- pin-striped pants, a black button-down, a blazer -- and prepared to find out which way it would go.

epistolary

Derek Boshier: What the Papers Say, 1978 (UK).  RIP, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  As much as I complain about the SF Chronicle, I genuinely hope it does not follow suit and cease its print operations.  There's just something about reading an actual paper.

And on that note, I'm off to New York to run around the city for a few days sans Internet.  No, I don't have an iPhone.  Somehow I still manage to live.  On the agenda: art, art and more art.  I'll report back from the other side.