Actually packing up two collages -- this one and this one -- to hand deliver to their new home, and suddenly the dark clouds are lifting. I'm back in the present. My art. My collages. My friends. Caring loving people in my life. Woo hoo for lifting the Clouds of Doom.

The time will come when the shit hits the fan.
That time is now.

My shit is hitting the fan.

Actually I don’t know if it’s shit as much as rocks, boulders, mountains
of exhaustion and depression and of
I CAN’T DO THIS ANY FUCKING MORE.

I can’t work a job, take care of my kid, write a book, write movie reviews, make art, paint my house, clean my bathrooms, make the lunch, make the dinner, do the dishes, scoop the cat box, sit through meeting after meeting after meeting, throw away the majority of my waking hours at a day job and try to be something besides just a struggling working mom.

I CAN’T DO IT ANYMORE.

Being pulled in so many directions I’m snapping at the joints.
I can feel it. In my elbows, my knees, my hips,
everywhere things are supposed to bend.

The exhaustion is pulling me apart.
The depression is flushing me down the toilet.

I am sick and tired of scrambling to survive. I’ve been scrambling
since I was born. And I want to be done. When can I be done
scrambling?

I need a fucking break.
I need to break.
Things. People. Myself.

I’m driving to work this morning and stuck behind a stupid cow in a minivan
a Mary Kay Cosmetics bumper sticker on one side and an American flag on the other.
This bitch is braking all the way down Campbell, her brake lights flashing like red screams and I want

to do bad things.
I have bad thoughts.
I think of how good it would feel to ram her.
Snap that Mary Kay Cunt right out of her Dodge Caravan.
Because I’m snapping.

I am snapping.

I’m snapping when I stand in line at the coffee shop and read about the asshole developer who’s killing Saguaros in the Tortolita Mountains. I’m snapping when I open the New York Times and read that Blackwater is still on the government payroll. I am tired of reading about these motherfuckers who fuck up everything and pave their wealth with blood and human lives. I am tired of these motherfuckers.

In fact, I am just tired.
So fucking tired.

And I am snapping.

I’m snapping when I think that the two days I had to rest this past week
are the only two days I’ve had to rest
IN TEN FUCKING YEARS.

I’m snapping when I think of the things I’m capable of but understand the limits of my life.

I’m snapping when I think of that goddamn motherfucking Doodle Art kit that my mother gave me when I was sixteen years old.
I’m snapping when I think about a million things about my mother –
her pills, her lies, her sick sick sickness.
I am snapping because she robbed me.
Because I could have been more and done more.
I am snapping because I know

I will never do anything
or be anyone
but myself and myself is stuck
working working working working
all my fucking life.
Dammit.

I am snapping with “if onlys”
and for the record I fucking hate “if onlys.”

I am snapping because I am sitting here swallowing down my nausea and my exhaustion and buckling up for another day that will steal my time, another day when I don’t do the things I know I can do. Another day when my gifts are a curse. Another day that will come and go.

The shit has hit the fan, and I am here to tell you
I can’t do this anymore.
I cannot do this anymore.
The gun to my head, the pedal to the metal.
Something’s got to give in my life.
What’s it gonna be?
What’s it gonna be?

These are collages I made from my KDD Collage Archive Materials to attempt to raise some dollars for Bean's Holiday Fund. All proceeds generated will go to Bean for the holidays and for other Bean Support.



The materials used are images I have collected over time that I liked and spoke to me. Some of them date way way back in time. Many are from vintage material. I've been selling my larger more complex collages for $100 - $200 each. These are 5.5 x 7.5 inches. I'm selling them for $40 each or 3 for $100. They are original, one-of-a-kind KDD Collages. There will be no other made like these. This is a one time sale for the Bean as the holidays approacheth. I can accept paypal or checks. Once someone did an Amazon trade with me. That worked. I used it to buy Bean birthday presents.



All of these pieces are personal and come straight from me and my heart. If you are interested you can email me at kdotdammit at gmail. I've listed them by numbers in the order that I made them.



Many thanks. And even if you're not interested in buying any, I hope you enjoy looking at them. I'll have no problem keeping them for myself if they don't sell since I do like to hoard my art. :-)

XO

KDD

Following thornyc's cue, I decided to start my day by cleaning off my desktop. Here is a bunch of stuff I've been saving. I'm giving it to you and pressing delete. Enjoy.



Time to hit the road for a cool crispy chilly morning run. Yay, for cool crisp and chilly.

As soon as I finished my final (at least for now) edits on The Boosters, Morrissey's voice seeped into the room crooning a cover version of Moon River. It just seemed too beautiful and too perfect not to share, so here's the MP3 for you. Hope you like it:

Before I met my Mafia Pimp Pat back in 1978, I had no idea what “Boosters” were. I had heard of booster shots and booster seats, but never knew there were actual people who called themselves “Boosters,” that being a “Booster” is a line of work, albeit one that involves theft and organized crime. Even after joining Pat’s “family,” it took me a while to understand exactly what it is that a Booster does even though my body was adorned with Booster goods.

Let me tell you about it. After Pat “discovered” me (which you can read about here), he brought me to his swank Pacific Heights apartment and told me, “If you’re going to be one of my girls, then you’re going to dress with class.”

Class for Pat meant top-of-the-line fashion. The real stuff from the real designers. Pat didn’t fuck around with low-end knock offs. The very first night Pat brought me home, he told me to stand in front of him and turn around. I awkwardly spun my sixteen year old body in front of this 68 year old mobster. “You’re a perfect Size 9,” he assessed. He then disappeared into the other room and returned with his arms overflowing with piles of silk. Red silk. Magenta silk. Cobalt blue silk. Perfectly sewn and crafted silk that bore names like Anne Klein, Valentino, and Christian Dior. Ludicrously elaborate silk dresses the likes of which appeared in Vogue magazine. Pat tossed three dresses at me and told me to try them on.

I went into the guest bedroom, peeled off my jeans and t-shirt and slipped on a blue silk halter dress. I reached behind my neck to tie a bow in the back, and the fabric felt like it would fall apart if I just touched it wrong. It was so cool and slippery. The silk clung to my sixteen year old body like wet tissue and felt like it would leave streaks on my body. I looked in the mirror. My big eyes stared out of my head. It was like someone cut out the head of a startled child and pasted it onto a woman’s body in a magazine picture. This blue silk-clad body wasn’t mine. I walked into the other room and showed Pat.

“Beautiful, Baby,” Pat blew out an approving stream of cigar smoke. “You’re beautiful. You just need the clothes to show it.”

From then on, it was all designer clothing all the time. I never went anywhere with Pat unless I was dressed to the Ts in high fashion.

One day, Pat picked me up to bring me to his place. “I’ve got a surprise for you, Baby.”

I stepped into Pat’s apartment and looked around. There was no big shiny package with a pretty bow. Now giant bag that said SURPRISE FOR YOU on it.

Pat kept looking at his gold and diamond Cartier watch.

“Pavé,” Pat liked to say when he looked at his watch. “Feel how smooth the diamonds are. Like a baby’s bottom.”

I reached out and stroked Pat’s watch, marveling that diamonds, which are basically rocks, could be so smooth. Pavé and Cartier are two other words I learned from my Mafia Pimp Pat. Pat only wore Cartier watches. (“Only the best for me, Baby.”) And he liked them “pavé” style – paved with diamonds, the entire surface a glittering smooth mosaic of diamond pieces. That was Pat all around, paved with diamonds and sucking on a cigar. Pat looked at his watch again. “Any minute now.” Then he muttered under his breath, “Goddamn unreliable nigger bitch.” (As a 68 year old Sicilian, Pat had a nasty temper, little patience for tardiness, and a vicious racist streak. In other words, the stuff you see in the movies is true.)

The doorbell eventually rang, and a tall black woman swept into the room. She was a formidable presence. At least six feet tall, she wore a long black leather coat, black leather pants, black leather boots, and a black leather cap. She wore the black leather and on her tall lean black body like a dare, pronouncing her blackness with every breath, every pore, every thread of her being. Her face was like a rock with “don’t fuck with me” etched into its impenetrable surface. The mere presence of this woman could make you pee your pants with awe. But not Pat. Pat just got down to business. He glanced at his pavéd Cartier watch one more time and said, “It’s about time. Where’re the goods?”

“I’ll call my people up,” the woman said.

“Her people” were a group of three other black-leather-clad black women who looked more like her army except instead of bearing guns, they bore arms full of fur coats. Pat smiled when he saw all those pelts of fur.

“You got some beauties this time, Robin,” Pat cooed. Apparently the woman had a name – Robin. “Put them over there on the sofa.”

Robin’s army dispatched the piles of fur onto Pat’s leather sofa. Pat got up and started inspecting and inventorying the merchandise. Four full length black mink coats, two full length white minks, two short brown sable jackets, a big fluffy fox jacket, and, the prize of a the bunch (according to Pat), a chinchilla coat. Pat lifted the gray mass of fur towards me. “Feel this, Baby. The softest thing you’ll ever touch in your life.”

It looked like a breathing animal that gray coat. I plunged my fingers into the fur. The coat was patch-worked together in square pieces. I stroked the little animal pelts. It was a familiar feel, and I knew why those squares were so small. Chinchillas aren’t that big. When I was in fourth grade, we took a field trip to the Randall Museum in San Francisco. My favorite part of the trip was the animal room where they had real live chinchillas. I actually got to take one of the tiny furry animals out its cage and hold it. It was the size of a baseball, and it was the cutest, softest little critter I had ever seen. I never held anything so precious in my life. For the next year, all I wanted was my own chinchilla. I never got one, but now I was standing in my Mafia Pimp’s apartment stroking hundreds of dead chinchilla pelts.
Pat was pleased with the merchandise and counted out what seemed like an infinite supply of hundred dollar bills for Robin. The stack of bills was as thick as Pat’s fist. Robin took the money and shoved it deep into the pocket of her leather pants.

“What’s next?” Pat asked Robin.

“We’re hitting a delivery at I. Magnin next week,” she answered. “You want in?”

“You bet I do,” Pat nodded.

“I’ll call you,” Robin said. She left the apartment with her three-women army trailing right behind.

That’s when I learned who the Boosters were. Boosters hijacked fashion deliveries, stole the goods, and sold them to Pat who then re-sold them to his mafia friends and to San Francisco society people. Besides his small stable of whores, Pat’s main line of mafia work was with the Boosters.

After Robin left, Pat looked at me and said, “Now for your surprise. You’re one of my girls now, and all my girls wear fur.”

I knew Pat’s girls wore fur. His wife Lulu had every kind of fur imaginable. Even when it was 70 degrees outside, she never left the apartment without wearing one of her fur coats. The woman wore full length mink with sweatpants and sneakers. Pat’s daughter-in-law Chelsea wore her high-end minks like some kind of crest of royalty. So what if she was a prostitute like the rest of us. Her white mink set her apart from the low-end hoards of whores. As foreign as the idea of fur was to me and as confused as I was about the chinchilla coat, I felt a well of pride surge inside my naïve sixteen year old heart when I realized that Pat was going to give me a mink coat.

Except Pat didn't pick a mink coat out of the giant mountain of fur. He pulled out the fox fur jacket and handed it to me. “This one’s for you, Baby.”

My face must have dropped into the basement because Pat immediately registered my disappointment.

“I can’t have one of those?” I asked pointing to the black minks.

“Oh no, Baby. You’re too young and pure for mink. You don’t want to look like one of those tired old whores. You’re too good for that.”

Great. So I wasn’t too young and pure to be Pat’s prostitute and sell my young pure cunt to his long list of old fart clients, but I was too young and pure to wear a black mink. Not fair.

Pat’s wife Lulu came home and saw the pile of fur on the sofa. “Oh Pat they’re beauties!” she exclaimed. She grabbed a shiny black full length mink from the pile and put it on. She spun around, running her hands down her flanks and stroking the fur.

“It’s like this one was made for me!” Lulu gleamed.

“Then it’s yours, Baby.” Pat gave Lulu the mink. But of course, Lulu was his fifty year old wife and most loyal whore.


I took the fox coat, and I wore it when we went out. If I didn’t wear the coat, there would be hell to pay. I always felt like the odd girl out in that big puffy red thing. You can bet that snooty bitch Chelsea never missed an opportunity to ride me for not having a mink. (Read more about Chelsea here.)

Robin eventually delivered the I. Magnin load to Pat, and I was stocked with another supply of high-end fashion. My favorite outfit was an Anne Klein pant suit. It looked like a gangster suit, but it was for women. It was olive green with a steel sheen, and I felt so tough and beautiful in that suit. I wanted to wear it all the time, but Pat insisted that the tricks liked to see his girls in dresses, so I’d throw on my red Valentino and grab a taxi to the Fairmont Hotel to meet Full Moon Hank for a fuck and a spanking.

Out of all the beautiful amazing fashions that came into Pat’s possession, he was obsessed with the new high-end fabric Ultra Suede. Thick and stiff with a faux suede feel, Ultra Suede was the “miracle fabric” of the late 70s. It was perfect for the disco dancing coke head because if you spilled your cocktail on it, you could wash it right off with soap and water, and POW the fabric would be like new. Pat had a vast collection of Ultra Suede sport coats.

Once Pat knocked a bunch of ashes off his cigar and rubbed them into his jacket sleeve making an ugly gray mess out of the fabric.

“Lulu, go get a washcloth!” Pat ordered.

Pat wiped down the sleeve and all traces of ash disappeared.

“See,” Pat extolled. “Like new!” I swear that man was the number one proponent of Ultra Suede.

One day, Robin arrived with a vast supply of women’s Ultra Suede suits. Boxy skirts with even more boxy jackets, Pat was delighted that he could now dress me in the new miracle fabric. Pat rifled through the piles of suits and pulled out a navy blue atrocity. “This one’s a size 10, perfect for you, Baby!” He handed me the stiff square suit and told me to put it on.

I pulled on the Vile Fabric and felt like an enormous upholstered box. I hated it, but I didn’t dare let Pat know that I thought the outfit and Ultra Suede in general were hideous. I mean, as a general rule, you don’t tell your Mafia Pimp that the fashions he gives you are ugly. Luckily, that was the only Ultra Suede shipment, and I got away with only having the one outfit foisted onto me. It should be noted, however, that Ultra Suede did eventually become the “miracle fabric” for UPHOLSTERING FURNITURE. It’s no surprise that wearing that shit made me feel like I was a sofa since it was eventually used to make sofas.

So life went on. I stayed decked out in designer fashions, turned tricks for Pat, and avoided wearing the Ultra Suede as much as possible. One night, Pat stuffed the trunk and the back seat of his Cadillac El Dorado with the biggest supply of furs and fashions ever. The car was literally exploding with silk and mink. He piled me and Lulu into the front seat, and we drove up to Pacific Street to visit Pat’s son Vince.

Vince lived in one of those old really classic Spanish style Pacific Heights apartment buildings. Wrought iron lamps hung from the ceiling, and hand-knotted wool rugs carpeted the tile floors of its security-heavy corridor. We rode the elevator up to Vince’s apartment, but when we got there, Vince stepped out (with that horrid bitch Chelsea stuck to his arm), and we got back into the elevator. We rode up as high as the elevator would go.

The highest the elevator would go was to the top of the building where a single penthouse apartment took up the entire floor. Apparently, the residents of this penthouse knew we were coming because the door opened, and Vince was greeted with open arms by a little white-haired lady wearing a tidy wool skirt and jacket and a meticulous strand of pearls. We stepped inside, and the cavernous living room was flanked by a cadre of San Francisco’s society women. The whole place reeked of perfume and money.

“Where do you want the merchandise?” Vince asked.

“How about the dining room?” the white-haired woman responded.

Vince and Pat went downstairs and brought up the merchandise. It took them three trips to bring all the dresses and fur coats into the dining room and dump them on the banquet-sized table.

I slumped down on an easy chair in the corner of the room and watched as the Bargain Basement Sale of the Century went down in this luxurious Pacific Heights penthouse apartment. The women dove into the dining room and pulled at the piles of clothing. They disappeared with armfuls into bedrooms to try on the fashions. They strolled around the room in Yves St. Laurent and white mink. They refilled their cocktails as Pat cautioned, “Not next to the furs!”

At one point, the white-haired woman spotted me in the corner and came over and asked me if she could get me anything. “Would you like something to drink, Sweetheart?” Why did these people always treat me like a child when I was one of Pat’s whores? It must have been the fox fur jacket.

After what seemed like an eternity, the women made their picks, the piles dwindled, and Pat collected his cash.

On the way home, Pat said, “Just wait. You’ll see those coats on the cover of the Society Page next week.”

When we got back to his place, Pat gave me and Lulu our pick of the leftovers. I picked a black tissue-thin silk dress with tiny purple flowers on it. Lulu picked a flowing magenta evening gown.

When I was finally forced out of San Francisco by My Mafia Pimp Pat, I packed up all my designer clothes in a suitcase and left everything else behind. I carried those dresses around with me for over a year. They got stinkier and stinkier the more I wore them without dry cleaning them. Dry cleaning wasn’t really an option for a sixteen year old Whore on the Run. I eventually sold the fox coat for 50 bucks to help make rent, and I lost the suitcase and all the clothes inside it. I’ve never bought a designer anything ever since, though if I could, I sure would love to show my daughter my favorite brilliant red Valentino dress. I tore the dance floor up in that thing. I would like to have it just for the heck of it. Maybe I’d even cut it up and sew a stuffed animal out of it. But that’s not going to happen. That dress and my days with the Boosters are long gone. And that’s probably not such a bad thing really.


Visiting home for Christmas, 1978 wearing my new Fox Fur Jacket. I was sixteen years old. Note, my mother gave me Doodle Art for a present. Don't underestimate how weird and difficult it is for me to look at and share this photo. I have a couple of other photos of me wearing Booster clothes, but I couldn't find them just now when I looked for them. Later. I'm done with the Boosters for today.

Bean asked me to show you the Rescue Legos and to again thank those of you who helped us overcome our Massively Devastating Lego Crisis. Here is the completed set. Me and Bean built it together though she completely independently interprets the instructions. She is a Master Lego Builder (among other extraordinary things). It is IMPOSSIBLE to photograph my purple walls, but I wanted to show you the Rescue Legos in their Purple Environment.



The orangish poster hanging on the wall is an original Jefferson Airplane poster from Oct 26, 1968. (October 26 is Bean's birthday.)



The blue poster is from when I saw the Cure play with Dinosaur Jr in an absolutely Kick Ass concert in 1992.



I still have an original photo of Bruce Springsteen signed by the artist from a 1974 issue of Rolling Stone magazine to frame and hang on my "music wall." But haven't gotten around to that yet. I'll scan it before I post it and show you. He's very young and scraggly looking.

Speaking of music memorabilia, I also found this poster from the Sonic Youth Goo tour concert I saw in 1990 at the Warfield Theater when Nirvana opened for them (before Nirvana released Nevermind). I thought Bean would like the poster, so I framed it and hung it over her bedroom door. Hard to get a good photo of it, but it looks stellar there.



Consider this part of my At Home With KDD Spread. Now onto writing activities.

Edited to add: I have to take a minute to sing my own praises and pat myself on my exhausted back. I may have beaten myself into the ground with my hard work, but MY HOUSE ROCKS because of me and my physical labor. I can't wait to finish it . . . IN JANUARY.

Sitting down to write after literally sleeping half the day away. It's so nice to be home alone and resting. It has been YEARS since I allowed myself to stay home and rest. Too bad I spent most of my day asleep in bed. Now let's see if I can get some writing done.

BTW -- Regarding this room. The little pictures above the patio door are original vintage handbills from the 1960s from the Fillmore. They look great there. I'll scan them for you when I do the big photo spread. The little black and white photo is an autographed photo from Metallica. Ha ha. And here is the fabric that I'm going to make curtains out of for those big bare windows this weekend:



Just in case you were curious.

And yes, I am as tired as I look. I could easily sleep the rest of the day away, but I'm going to see if I can get some writing done. That always makes me happy, you know, like I'm doing something with my life instead of sleeping.

Continuing through the Republican Gomorrah and reading about all the various conspirators of the Christian rightwing, I suddenly remembered my old neighbor Fred. Fred lived upstairs in the old 1867 Victorian flat I rented in Vallejo, California. That is, Fred lived upstairs when he and his wife Lolly were around. I shared a house with my landlords and “adopted-uncles” Russ and Joe. Lolly was Joe’s mother, and Fred was her husband.

Fred and Lolly periodically wheeled into the street in Fred’s old Beat-to-Shit Winnebago, parked it in front of the house, and hung out for a couple of months. Fred earned his keep by fixing things around the house which meant fixing things in my flat when they broke, which was often since the house was built in 1867 and didn’t have many modern amenities. All kinds of shit went wrong with that place. When it rained, walls caved in. When you turned the faucet on in the shower, sometimes the whole fixture came off in your hand and some soggy sheetrock and crumbling tile with it. If you poured pasta water down the kitchen sink, the pipes fell off. Circuits broke. Plumbing failed. And when things fell apart, Fred came downstairs to fix them.

Fred believed you could fix anything with bailing wire and duct tape, so a good deal of my place was held together with wire and sticky silver tape. Look under the kitchen sink, and you’d find a twisted mass of plastic pipes wrapped in wire and tape like some kind of industrial sculpture. Pour some pasta water down the sink, and more tape and wire would be added to the mix. The pipes would bust, and I’d call Fred. He’d knock on the door with a couple of cans of beer shoved in his back pocket, a roll of tape, a roll of wire and his never-ending stream of tales about the Rockefeller conspiracy and how the Rockefellers control the government, the Russians, the churches and everything on the globe. Fred was originally from Winslow, Arizona, the kind of place chockfull of Libertarian conspiracy enthusiasts. Back then, I’d quietly laugh at Fred’s ludicrous ideas. Whoever would have guessed that I’d end up living in the belly of the beast of such whacko conspiracy mongers? So many years later, and here I am in Arizona surrounded by Freds.
Fred’s wife Lolly absolutely loved me like a daughter. She loved me with all her heart, and poured her love into me like she poured her old and tired body into an endless assortment of colorful moo-moos. A More cigarette perpetually dangling from her lips and a heart as big as Texas, Lolly filled me up with her love. Sometimes I’d hear a tapping my kitchen window and find Lolly outside. She passed me plates of freshly fried Hush Puppies or some unidentifiable ground meat steak from Canned Foods Outlet. I’d thank her, take a bite and sadly, with no shortage of guilt, not finish what she gave me. It was like not eating Lolly’s love. I hurts me to think about it. I should have eaten the Hush Puppies and the Mystery Meat!

Back in those days, I was having a hard time. A really hard time, trying to adjust to life after the brutality of my life. Sometimes I’d spend the night crying out my demons. In the morning, Lolly would be sitting on the front porch waiting for me. She’d tell me, “Baby, I heard you crying last night and it tore my heart out. What can I do to help you? It hurts me to see you so hurt.” Lolly loved me. She also loved my loyal cat Tibbs and would leave little surprises for Tibbs on the porch -- the gizzards and innards of the turkeys that Lolly always seemed to buy on discount and roast year round.

Every few weeks, I’d spot Fred out on the street getting the old Winnebago ready for a trip. This usually involved patching it together with aforementioned bailing wire and duct tape. From the time it took him (and the amount of duct tape, wire, and pounding with hammers as well as the number of beers he consumed while working on the beast), it seemed like Fred and Lolly were planning a long trip. Eventually, the engine sputtered to life filling city blocks with its spew of exhaust, and I’d watch Fred and Lolly roll down the hill.

As it turns out, a couple of days after their departure, I’d usually spot the Winnebago in the parking lot of Freddie’s Flosden Club, a dive bar on Broadway. Joe and Russ didn’t want Fred and Lolly getting shitfaced in the house, so when Fred got his hands on a little cash (usually twice a month), he and Lolly cranked up the Winnebago and camped out at Freddie’s Flosden Club until they ran out of money. For days, I’d drive down Broadway and see the Winnebago. Then one day, I’d come home, and the there was the Winnebago, parked on the hill with a giant wood block under its front tire. Just in case. It always cracked me up that Fred liked to go to Freddie’s. Speaking of conspiracies, apparently the original Freddie Flosden was somehow involved in the Zodiac murders, which started in Vallejo. But that’s another story.

One day, Fred came back from Freddie’s Flosden Club, but Lolly wasn’t with him. It turns out that Lolly got really sick and had to go to the hospital. I went to visit her. Lolly’s body lay flaccid under her blue hospital gown. Her two enormous breasts heaved gently under the fabric like giant dying whales. Tubes of all variety punctured Lolly’s wrinkled skin. Cancer. Lolly was very sick. Lolly was going to die. Russ and Joe brought Lolly home a few days later. The night she came home, I went upstairs to see her. She lay in the dining room on a hospital gurney, her Get Well balloons fluttering all around her. I leaned down and hugged her and cried. I told her that I was okay and that Tibbs was okay, that Russy and Joe were going to take care of me. I promised her that I was fine. She smiled and hugged me. She died two hours later.

After Lolly died, Fred packed up a few cases of beer, patched the Winnebago together, and drove down Napa Street. He never came back. Apparently that’s what happens sometimes with men when their wives die.

This reminds me of my Uncle Les. Uncle Les was married to my step Aunt Pris. Not the most attractive people on the planet by a long shot. In fact, they were drunks, but Uncle Les was the most notorious drunk. Every single family holiday get together ended with Uncle Les literally passed out at the dinner table, snoring, his drooping face inches from his plate. Uncle Les worked as a teamster unloading trucks in San Francisco, and it’s a miracle he never died of an accident given that he started and ended each day shitfaced.
The best things that Uncle Les ever did for me were introduce me to Johnny Cash and teach me how to shoot a .357 Magnum. The Johnny Cash episode happened at Lake Berryessa. I was sitting on the dock fishing for Blue Gill with American cheese while my Uncle Les sat on a chair on the rocks listening to the radio, smoking cigarettes, and drinking beer. Johnny Cash’s voice broke through the little a.m. speaker singing “My Name Is Sue,” and my uncle told me about “the man in black.” He explained that Johnny Cash always wore black:

“ . . . for the poor and the beaten down, the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, for those who never read or listened to the words that Jesus said. For the sick and lonely, in mournin' for the lives that could have been. For the thousands who have died, believen' that the Lord was on their side. I'd love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that everything's OK, but I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back, Til things are brighter, I'm the Man in Black.”

From that moment on, I loved Johnny Cash. I still do. I thank my Uncle Les for that even though by the time we were throwing hot dogs on the BBQ that night, Uncle Les was passed out in a bowl of potato chips.

A few years later, I went camping in the mountains with my Uncle Less, and he put a .357 Magnum in my hands and told me to shoot. Shooting that gun was a momentous experience, a total bodily epiphany that was like having sex for the first time except that it felt good not mediocre. It felt really good. I didn’t want to stop shooting. You can read that story here.

The last time I saw my Uncle Les was at my brother Kevin’s funeral when his wife, my step Aunt Pris, told me that she always knew my brother would die of a drug overdose. Nice. I wanted to slug her. Uncle Les slumped in the corner of the patio drinking a screwdriver. At one point, I walked past him and he looked at me and said, “I’m real sorry, Kim. You must be hurting.”

Later on, my brother’s death was one of the things I cried about late at night while Lolly listened to my tears from upstairs.

I never saw Uncle Les or my Aunt Pris after Kevin’s funeral. My aunt eventually died of lung cancer, and Uncle Les was devastated. He couldn’t imagine life without her. He packed up his beat up Lincoln, loaded the trunk with beer, and took off. The last anyone heard of Uncle Les, he was wanted for manslaughter. Apparently he killed someone while driving drunk. But that was years ago. No one knows where he is now. Maybe he’s met up with Fred somewhere. Maybe they’re in Winslow, Arizona. Maybe there is a special place for drunk men with broken hearts. I don’t know. I just thought about these two men tonight while reading a book.

What’s a girl to do after busting her ass for months on her Almodovar Makeover? I’ll tell you what. Make a pot of homemade Bolognese of course. Except that this girl makes Bolognese Calabrese style – with sweet Italian sausage.

For the record, my mother’s family was from Calabria, and my genetic father’s family was from Naples. The two families couldn’t stand each other, but both families made Kick Ass Italian food. I made this killer sauce and penne pasta tonight, and my kiddo gobbled it up (except the sausage which she doesn’t eat). Bean loves her mom’s Italian cooking. I told my kiddo this is San Francisco native Italian food. None of that overly priced weird nouvelle crap. Just your basic olive oil, garlic, onions, mushrooms, red wine, sweet Italian sausage a few pinches of oregano and basil. Thank you very much.

And let me tell you what else. This food knocked me on my ass. Holy shit. I ate two giant bowls of this stuff and now I am completely catatonic. Narcotic Pasta Overdose. I was going to finish my day by going for a night run, but now I think I just need to sink into the sofa and read another chapter of Republican Gomorrah. For one thing, I can’t move off the sofa. I’ll run tomorrow . . .

After finishing the red wall, I pushed forth and actually finished cleaning out my Art Room, but then I crashed and burned. Me and Bean fled to the bookstore, where I was going to write, but then realized that I needed to just sit down, relax and read. I’ll start writing again tomorrow.

I’m reading Max Blumenthal’s Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party. This is a riveting, informative, and extremely well-written account of the Christian right in America and how its extremist politics split the Republican party and brought an end to American’s Reign of Republican Terror. (Or at least a temporary reprieve.) The book details the Christian right wing’s corruptions, its roots in fascist ideology, and its history of government control from the Cold War to the fall of GW Bush. It is great reading.

Here are a couple of Eisenhower quotes from the introduction:

Eisenhower on Eric Hoffer: “ . . . he points out that dictatorial systems make one contribution to their people which leads them to tend to support such systems – freedom from the necessity of informing themselves and making up their own minds concerning these tremendous complex and difficult questions.” (I need to read Hoffer’s “The True Believer, for many reasons including that he was a San Francisco Longshoreman.)

Eisenhower on the Cold War Paranoia Propaganda Machine: “It is difficult indeed to maintain a reasoned and accurately informed understanding of our defense situation on the part of our citizenry when many prominent officials, possessing no standing or expertness except as they themselves claim it, attempt to further their own ideas or interests by resorting to statements more distinguished by stridency than by accuracy.” (Think Sarah Palin.)

Speaking of Sarah Palin, I’ve been wanting to read Republican Gomorrah, but it’s been unavailable in any of the local libraries, and it’s only out in hardcover (for the steep price of 25 bucks). I got a coupon in the mail the other day, so I picked it up at the bookstore for fifteen bucks on Friday after seeing 2012 (what a perfect pairing).

When the guy at the bookstore checked me out, he asked me, “Are you going to get Sarah Palin’s book?”

I said, “Hell no! I’m not giving that woman a cent of my money.”

He asked, “You mean you’re not a Republican?” I told him NO I’M NOT A REPUBLICAN. I then explained to him what the book Republican Gomorrah is about and now he wants to read it.

He said, “Oh thank goodness. You’re not one of THEM.”

Trust me, at the Dreadful Foothills Mall where the bookstore is, there are plenty of THEM. They are the followers of the very fascist Christian right wing ideology that Blumenthal details in his book. They’re the ones whose favorite movie of all time is Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. (BTW -- Blumenthal refers to this particular Christ as Macho Jesus and goes into great detail about the role that Macho Jesus plays in the Christian right.)

While me and Bean were hanging out at the bookstore, she found the book Homer’s Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, Or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat. I told her about this book a while ago after reading an article about it in the New York Times. I knew that it’s the kind of book Bean loves to read. We reserved it from the library, but we’re like number 50 on the reserve list. At this point we’ll be lucky if we get it by the time Bean goes to college. I looked over at the cash register and saw the guy from the other night.
I went up to him and said, “Hi! It’s me. The NOT REPUBLICAN.” He stepped out from behind the counter and gave me a hug. He also gave me a coupon so I could get Bean’s $20 book for $12! Now me and Bean are both happily reading on the sofa. I’m reading about the fucked up Christian right, and she’s reading about a miraculous cat who was born with no eyes.

Regarding My Almodovar Makeover, it does seem that there is an interest in a photo spread, so I’ll take photos over the course of the week and post a big old spread with commentary next weekend. I want to get the best photos in the best light and take my time putting the spread together. (Plus, I need to clean up my messes before I show you.)

Back to sofa time.

Ciao.

EDIT: Bean is LOVING Homer's Odyssey so much. She says it's her Favorite Book of All Time. Yay. I knew she would love it. When I read about it, I thought I had never heard of a book that sounded more like something Bean would love. She says that reading it makes her "feel really happy." Nothing wrong with that.

For the record, when painting walls a rich red, you need to do three coats to get a RICH red. That third coat was crucial. I don't know what I was thinking. You're looking at a 2.5 hour third coat of red. Now it's time to sort of put my house back together, then get out of this toxic place and see if my writing brain is still functioning . . .

I’m on the final push of My Almodovar Makeover 2009. When I’m done with this last Red Project, I’m hanging up on My Makeover until January. I put two coats of red paint on this area yesterday. My exhausted body really wanted it to be done, and in a futile gesture of hope, I took off all the tape and said to myself that two coats of paint is enough EVEN THOUGH I KNEW DAMN WELL THAT IT NEEDED A THIRD COAT. So this morning, I got my aching body out of bed and re-taped the walls and ceiling to apply the third coat. Here I go.

Punkabella absolutely loves My Almodovar Makeover. She dive bombs the drop cloths, gets tape stuck to her feet, and climbs the ladder at every opportunity.
Speaking of the ladder, up I go even though every inch of my body is screaming at me to STOP ALREADY. I'm ready to be done with this project for a couple of months.

When I’m done with the paint, I get to sew curtains. And it’s almost time to pull the heads out of the butts of the Automated Reindeer! The fun never stops.

Speaking of My Almodovar Makeover, who wants to see a photo spread of what I’ve done so far this year in a single installment?

Poll #1485810 My Almodovar Makeover Photo Spread Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 25

Do you want to see a full photo spread of My Almodovar Makeover (the 2009 project)?

I have two Movie Memoir pieces that I want to write this weekend:

• A piece in response to A.O. Scott’s article on exposing to children to more “difficult” cinema.


• A piece in response to 2012 (which I saw yesterday and loved for the pure fun of it) and my lifelong love of disaster movies.

But first I have to paint another red wall and two more doors. Then I’m calling it quits on painting until January. So my full KDD Writing will be back soon.

In the meanwhile, I have to mention that while I was at the movies I saw this commercial for Levi's jeans:



Beautiful and touching isn’t it? In case you didn’t recognize the voice, that voiceover is the actual voice of Walt Whitman singing the praises of America. Too bad this sentimental look at America doesn’t mention that Levi's has closed down all their American production and put thousands of people out of work. How dare they produce such an egregiously self-congratulatory and hypocritical advertisement exploiting the dead poet Walt Whitman and all the American workers the company put on the unemployment rolls.

As a native San Franciscan, the original home of Levi's jeans, I grew up wearing nothing but Levis. Levis continued to be my only “jean of choice” throughout my adult life. I was devastated when they went global and closed down American production. And for the record, their jeans got shittier when they closed U.S. production. No longer could you buy a standard pair of 501 jeans (the same ones I’d been wearing for over thirty years). Now they constantly have to have new jeans with new numbers and new styles (all shitty) which produced in places like China. Yet, they want us to believe that they care about Americans. The only thing Levis cares about Americans for is our credit cards, our cash, our participation in the profits, our money which buys their products that are produced by cheap overseas labor.

It’s no surprise that so many companies have gone global in their production. It’s one thing to put people out of work and outsource labor. It’s another to produce such egregious lies in advertising your product. Shame on you Levi's. Fuck you and your big lying exploitive ad.

Dear World,

I have been hit by the Ton Of Bricks. I don’t know where they came from, but they seemed to arrive with the dirty wind beating my windows last night, and then there was the issue with the shower and how it wouldn’t turn off so I spent all night listening to DRIP DRIP DRIP DRIP.

I want to sleep. Oh, how I want to crawl under the covers and just spend a day sleeping. Instead I work.

Last night, when I wasn’t listening to the water drip in the shower, I fell into dreams of my grandmother’s house. My childhood was stacked up like a deck of cards and she slapped them down on the table playing a losing game of solitaire and smoking a Bel-Air cigarette. That was my face buried under the Queen of Spades. I wanted to grab it, keep it, share it with my daughter, but the cards kept falling and I couldn’t grab my face from the pile.

I have run myself into the ground, but I’m going to keep running. Until I fall.

I have a million words for a million things I want to tell you circling through my head. Instead I yawn.

Oh world, I would love to make a comeback but right now I can’t even count my fingers.

Oh world, I need to cut out of here and watch the end of you. Let’s face it. I’m only capable of doing two things today – sleeping or watching a movie. I’ll opt for the movie and hope that watching the world explode will keep me awake.

Bye bye exhausting world.

KDD

COLLAGE



I picked up some old Aperture magazines at Bookman’s for five bucks to use for part of the big B&W collage I’m working on. (I’ve decided to make a great big huge poster size black and white collage.) The thing about Aperture is that they are really great art magazines with excellent photography and essays. It’s a shame to cut them up, I always them front to cover before I take my scissors to them. I found this issue from Summer 1996 that focuses on different kinds of communal living in the United States. Fascinating stories and photo essays.

GYPSY CULTURE




Of particular interest to me was a feature on gypsy culture by Cristina Salvador – “American Roma: The Hidden Gypsy World.” It’s amazing how many myths and prejudices continue to circulate about gypsy culture. Gypsies (Romani) were originally from India (with possibly some African) and have been wandering without land for centuries. Here is a telling fact. During World War II, the Nazis exterminated the same percentage of the gypsy population as the Jewish population, yet there was never any trial or attempt at reparation for the gypsy holocaust. The essay in the book gives a lot of the history and ethnography of gypsy culture, but then focuses primarily on Romani subculture in the Los Angeles area. Particularly noteworthy is how, because of their extreme outsider status, the Calfornia Romani have been able to preserve their native language. Over 90% of gypsy children are raised speaking their native language Romani. Language death is evidence of the death of a culture, so while gypsies have continued to be an ethnic group subject to mass discrimination, that very discrimination and marginalization have allowed them to maintain their cultural integrity. Interesting stuff.

BUSHVILLE





I found another article of interest about a settlement built by homeless people in Tompkins Square Park in the 1990s. Reading about these people who carved out a sense of home and community in the middle of an urban landscape and how they inscribed culture and color and individuality on their space is a testament to human will but also a sad commentary on how divided this country is between the haves and have nots, how that “American Dream” is no dream at all for a lot of people in this country. What was striking to me was reading about this community from the 1990s and thinking about how that kind of “homeless presence” has been eradicated from the urban landscape. We don’t see these kinds of homeless communities anymore. They have been erased by redevelopment and “urban renewal” (e.g. corporate interests). The first thing I thought about when reading it is: “I wonder how long it took Giuliani to destroy it.” It turns out that Giuliani had Bushville leveled in 1997. This interesting article talks about the further marginalization of the homeless in the new post-Giuliani era (a system of erasure that could be applied to almost all major US cities). Needless to say that there was no way I could cut up these photos and destroy this archived legacy of these peoples’ homes. I had to keep them and the article in tact to honor these people who have already been socially dismembered. To cut up the historical document of the place they tried to carve out for themselves but then was destroyed by Giuliani’s fascist empire would have been a crime. So I’ll keep them in their original form.

Here’s a really good descriptive 1993 article from the New York Times that delivers an excellent portrait of what life was like in Bushville.

More on Bushville can be found in Morton’s book Fragile Dwelling.


DOCUMENTARY: TAXI TO THE DARK SIDE



Speaking of War Crimes, I finally got around to watching the documentary Taxi To The Dark Side. Dark Side, indeed. This documentary details with clear, sickening documentary evidence the Torture Industry that thrived under the Bush administration. It is utterly appalling and unfathomable to me that human beings could do the things that these people did to other human beings. Sickening also is the complicity of the government, that the government legislated the practices of torture and murder. What a bunch of monsters – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, the fuckwad Bush, and the especially scary John Yoo who masterminded the language that gave the Bush administration free reign to circumvent the Geneva Conventions and allow torture. Focusing on the brutal murder-by-torture of an innocent Afghani taxi driver in the Bagram prison in Afghanistan but then expanding to document torture practices in Abu Ghraib and Guatanamo, the film exposes how the United States government promoted the heinous and inhumane practice of torture. The movie is exceptionally grueling to watch. After watching it, I find it even more unfathomable that these motherfuckers got away with murder. They are so clearly guilty of horrible acts of violence against humanity. It is so clear that the ideology of Nazi Germany and the ideology of the Bush Administration were not far removed. That whole administration needs to be tried and convicted for war crimes.

I should note that I wanted to see the movie because the cinematographer is the same cinematographer who did The Wrestler, and her work here is equally incredible. I am a firm believer that a documentary is beholden to good filmmaking and needs to be well constructed and put together with mastery of the art. It is not enough to simply document events; a documentary has to be an exercise in good thoughtful innovative filmmaking, and Taxi To The Dark Side certainly is that. But wow, it’s very hardcore.



THOMAS DEMAND



Speaking of War Crimes, I’ve been meaning to tell you about Thomas Demand. He is catalogued as a photographer, but really his work is a crossover between photography, sculpture and assemblage. The premise of his work is utterly fascinating to me. He finds images in the media, many of which are archival materials from some kind of violent history, and then he recreates the scenes with paper sculptures and then photographs them. The photograph of his replica model is the final art product. In recreating media images that have saturated our mass consciousness, Demand is addressing how the media turns horror into artifact, how significant events become things/objects once distilled and packaged through the mass media machine. Somehow the horror and humanity of a particular historic moment becomes erased through the repetition of media representation. The actual event becomes its media representation rather than an event that had real effect on real people.



Demand’s pieces manage to be chillingly detached, clinical, and void of human presence, but they are also creepily eerie and laden with a kind of invisible horror. This disturbing tension is most apparent in relation to his pieces “Corridor” and “Archive.” “Corridor” is a reconstruction of the hallway outside Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment . “Archive” is a recreation of Leni Riefenstahl’s film archives. Reifenstahl made propaganda films for the Nazis which disseminated Nazi ideology to the masses and helped condition the German public to accept the extermination of whole populations (e.g. Jews and gypsies) as something humanly acceptable. Dahmer murdered seventeen men and boys in the apartment that Demand depicts. In both of these instances, Demand studied every detail of the media representation of the location, and then he created a model out of paper. Look closely at the images and note that the doors don’t have handles, the lights don’t have switches, and you can see cracks and gaps where the paper comes together. It is this emptiness and the leaking spaces between paper that is so unsettling and echoes with the horrific history of the events that have been contained by clinical representation. I could write a ton about Thomas Demand, and maybe someday I will.

I have a couple of other things I wanted to add to this Media Update, but I just ran out of time. Off to work, and then to chug away on new memoir piece.

Have a nice day, and see you soon.

I’ve been spending the past couple of days packing up my artwork and shipping it to new homes. It’s been an incredibly intense and moving experience. I mean, I hoard my artwork. I do. I put so much personal investment into everything that I make that I never want to let go of it, so I keep it all under my wing. But when I called out for help, people came through for me, and though I protect my artwork like my babies, I felt like it was a really big move for me in many ways to let go, to pack it up and send it off to people I trust and people who care enough about me and my artwork to buy it, help me, take my work into their homes and their lives.

I realized that part of the reason I feel so tired (besides the physically grueling work of the purple paint job) is that I am just overwhelmed by the caring and thoughtfulness that came my way, that there are people out there who appreciate what I do, who are taking pieces of me into their lives and their homes. I am bowled over by your love and support. When I write a poem, draw a pen noise, or craft a collage, I am telling my story. These are pictures of my life and my history because that’s what I do. That’s what I know how to do. Recreate myself over and over and over again in words and in pictures. That you have taken those pictures and those words and appreciated them so much has moved me to such a deep level of feeling and emotion that I can’t even articulate it right now. I am touched.

Due to a lot of extraneous bullshit in my life, I have held back so much of myself these past couple of years, but now all that I’ve been holding back has been opened again. I’m ready to work on my book again. I’m ready to write poems again. I’m ready to keep making art, lots and lots of art. To tell my story in so many ways it’s making my head spin just thinking about it. And you did that for me, you who called me, wrote me, and offered your support of my work. You did it. You opened me back up again, and I thank you.

One friend wanted to buy a hand-written autographed version of my poem “Holes.” I finished writing it out today and sent it off in the mail. He paid me for the poem, but on some level I feel like I should have paid him for the experience. Every single word that I wrote on paper came out of me like a real living thing. Every line, every scratch of ink on that paper moved me to tears because this friend wants to take these words from me, hang them on his wall. That he sees beauty in my words and something solid enough that he would frame it and live with it. This is huge. This is beautiful. I am moved.

I don’t know what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that things happen for a reason, and that somehow the ridiculous mishap in a parking lot on Friday night has led me to a new open place in my art and writing and a profoundly moving sense that there are people out there who truly care about me and my creative voice and vision and this is something that I still cannot fully comprehend, that I am overwhelmed by, that I want to thank you for.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

A friend of mine asked me recently, “So you really like movies and writing about movies?” I said yes that I do, but I also acknowledged that I use movie writing as a “safety net,” that I retreat into writing about movies when I feel vulnerable and don’t want to expose myself so much. Movie writing is safe ground for me. I rarely feel all fucked and exposed from writing about a movie. It takes a lot of fortitude to write about some of the other things I write about (e.g. my memoir writing), so sometimes I just don’t feel like enduring the exposure and the vulnerability that I subject myself to when writing that stuff.

However, last time I checked, people still want to read it, so I guess I better hang up my insecurities and get back to the project. I woke up this morning, and I realized it’s time to start taking risks again and get back to the godforsaken book project. On that note, this week I won’t be writing any lengthy movie reviews. I usually only have the resources to write one really written piece of something a week, and this week it will be another story of me and the mob. I’m telling you now because when I post it in a day or two, I hope that you read it and let me know. I need your support to keep me going with the book. I’m just going to tell you up front.

So yeah, back to writing other things and pulling myself away from the safety of movies. Except that there are a couple of movies that I saw but never wrote about, so let me give you my ten second reviews:

ZOMBIELAND

I actually saw this movie on opening day but never got around to writing about it because really there’s not much to say. I mean, it’s hard to carve out an existence in a world that is infested with zombies (e.g. look out your window or take a trip to the mall). Zombies are a real pain in the ass, so it’s a heck of a lot of fun watching Woody Harrelson beat in the heads of the zombie motherfuckers who plague the American landscape.

Despite its hilarious excess of gore, the movie is actually Zombie-Lite. It’s so darn sweet and endearing. Whoever woulda guessed that a zombie story could have a heart of gold? It’s not so much a zombie movie as it is an “alternative family” movie, where oddball characters unite and create an alternative family in the vast wasteland of zombie-infested America. The best part of the movie is the Bill Murray cameo. The other best part of the movie is exiting the movie theater and experiencing the full frontal assault of the Zombie World we live in. Leaving the parking lot of the Dreadful Foothills Mall, I was seriously inclined to take a few zombies out with my car door. I refrained.


A SERIOUS MAN

In all honesty, I’m not that much of a Coen Brothers fan. Their movies are always enjoyable to watch in the moment, but their meticulous technical perfection always leaves me feeling a little empty. It’s like their movies are so perfectly constructed on the surface level that they don’t allow any depth. There is no room to get inside them. This fact is what made me want to see A Serious Man. Based on their father and their childhood, the movie uses intensely personal material, and I wanted to see how the intensely personal played out in their intensely impersonal movie making style.

The result is amazing. A Serious Man is by far one of the tensest movies I have ever seen. The Coen brothers took this extremely personal autobiographical subject -- their father -- and wrapped it all in a meticulous formal construction that squeezes out all the personal and leaves a pure surface and impenetrable object that is infused with the tension of the personal that it refuses to deliver. The movie sputters forth in a kind of garbled hysteria, yet the hysteria is held together by the perfection of form. Not one single moment is messy, out of place, or accidental in this movie. The movie is so tight that it’s suffocating to watch. I truly was left breathless, but it was a good kind of suffocation.

There are a couple of scenes that are critical to how the movie functions formally. In one scene, a young Rabbi tells Larry Gopnik (a.k.a. the father) that all he has to do is look in the parking lot to find G-D (a.k.a. GOD), but when Larry looks out the window, all he sees is a bleak lifeless parking lot. In another scene, the older Rabbi tells Larry the story of the Dentist and the Goy. We sit on the edge of our seats waiting to find out the outcome of the story, but instead the story falls flat and gives us no climax, no answer, no depth. The movie functions the same as these two scenes. We endure the tension of the narrative and try to dig our way inside it, but all we find is an empty parking lot. Likewise, we wait for all those story elements to come together with a giant pay-off, but all we get is the perfection of the surface which refuses to give us access to its interior. But this is exactly what makes the movie interesting to me, the tension that is created between the personal subject matter and the absolute refusal to engage with it personally.

On the other hand, A Serious Man is also one of the most Jewish movies ever made. The movie opens with a fifteen minute scene in Yiddish, and the entire movie hones in on the Jewish culture of this family. In fact, the movie is extremely alienating to watch, not just because it refuses to give us access to its interior but also because, unless you’re Jewish or possess an in depth knowledge of Jewish culture and traditions, a hell of a lot of the movie isn’t going to make sense. But I think the claustrophobia and alienating effect of the movie are showing the claustrophobia and alienating effect of growing up in Jewish culture. The fact that the movie is so alienating to audiences shows how Jewish culture is perceived as alien in this country. The other thing that is interesting in the movie is how it equates Jewish mysticism with 60s counterculture as represented by the repeated trope of the music of Jefferson Airplane.

Anyway, I probably could write a very thorough review of A Serious Man because I found it profoundly interesting, but I also don’t want to touch it with a ten foot pole because I’m chicken shit of dealing with the subject matter. I’ll save my daring maneuvers for working on the book project.

Okay, that’s it for movies I’ve seen in the movie theater. I have a bunch of DVDs I’ve watched and books I’ve read to tell you about, but not now. Now it’s time to get some memoir writing done, and I hope you’ll read along with me.

See you soon.

My physical exhaustion is profoundly all consuming from my monumental purple painting job plus two trips to Phoenix in two days. I am so utterly exhausted from the inside out. I'm being smart. I've learned that when I'm this tired, I need to hunker down, hole up, recuperate, and not do things that make me feel vulnerable (like write intense shit on my blog). Therefore, I came home from work tonight and decided not to do anything but sit on the sofa, soak in the warm luster of my purple wall, and mine images for collages.
I want to do a series of black and white collages because I want some B&W work to hang above the patio door on my purple wall. What you see here is the result of tonight's mining. Really though, I just wanted to take pictures of my scissors and my collage pieces. I love my collage pieces. I like mining them and looking through them and enjoying the specific shape and feel of each piece. I like the way their edges look. But then again, I do have a thing for edges.


Mining was a more relaxing process than usual tonight because it also involved doing a lot of reading. Read a very interesting article on California Gypsies and the history and ethnography of Gypsies in general. Also read about photographer Brian Reid. But I'm too tired to tell you about them, so consider this a place holder.
Time to disappear again. I'll resurface when I've recovered from My Almodovar Breakdown and my resources are fully replenished.

Bye.