Once By The Pacific by Robert Frost.
(quoted in The Pleasure of Reading in an Ideological Age)

I've been reading The Pleasure of Reading in an Ideological Age by Robert Alter. I love Alter's writing, especially The Art of Biblical Narrative (which nicely compliments the discussion of the Bible in Mimesis).

What I love most about Alter's writing is that it clear, lucid and breaks down how literature works through close reading. The key thing is that I can understand it - unlike most literary theory. It treats reading like a craft & a pleasurable occupation.

I'll post an excerpt soon.

ps. I'm loving All Souls' Rising by Madison Smartt Bell.

Breakdancer, People's Park, May, 2006

Why isn't there a classic hip hop movie?

Old school films like Wild Style, Krush Groove, Beat Street and Breakin 1 & 2 are great, but they have awful acting, production, writing, direction, etc. Moreover, they feeled canned - completely unspontaneous. What's worse, these films are clearly trying to water down or whitewash hiphop culture in order to make it appeal.

Graffiti and dancing seem to translate better to film than rap - especially freestyle rap.

Films like Belly just apply hiphop themes to traditional drama. They're just vehicles for musicians who want to be actors.

Are 8 mile and Hustle & Flow really the best we can do?

Are there underground hiphop films?

I'm looking for a film - feature or documentary - where the energy, life and creativity of rap comes across. Or at least some kind of hiphop Sound of Music, where the music is integral to the movie and has a life of its own.

Or even just a hiphop Graduate, where the music plays a key role in the mood and storytelling of the film. It doesn't have to be about rappers, breakers & writers.

The musical genre is dying to be reinvented - and hiphop is a perfect genre. In a conventional musical (such as West Side Story), the transition from dialogue to "musical numbers" can feel forced. It is a convention of the musical genre that one has to get used to. But hip hop is inherently narrative. It's about one's voice & self-expression. Moreover, is has a Musique Conrete quality - it constantly assimilates the sounds of one's surroundings, be they gunshots or screams, and turns them into musical elements.

Open Source Bribery
I had an idea for a dot-org: www.OpenSourceBribery.org. We all know that money buys influence in Washington. The problem is, individuals have a hard time getting the attention of politicians. Only corporations, religious organizations, dedicated fundraisers, etc. can give or raise money in large quantities.

PACs such as MoveOn.org - which aggregate the money of individuals - weren't that effective in 2004. Nor were flash-mob fundraising coordinated by blogs such as DailyKos (see this).



My idea is this: a website that collects campaign donations that are contingent on specific votes (or series of votes on an issue). It then clearly communicates these possible rewards to politicians.

It's a lot like a mutual fund. You commit $3,000 to a fund that will be evenly distributed to, say, people who vote for a specific campaign finance reform bill. The website then advertises that $1,000,000 from 1,000 individuals will be evenly distributed to any senator who votes for the bill. A politician's staffer can then browse the website and see how possible votes will effect their contributions.

The website does NOT control the money like a PAC. It holds your "contribution" in escrow and executes the contribution after the vote on your behalf. This (may?) circumvent campaign finance law concerning PACs.

I'm not a lawyer. This may not be exactly legal. But something like it could be.



One interesting twist would be: "funds" that only pay if a bill passes.

Found a place to stay, finally. I sense that it is surrounded by tons of great ethnic cuisine. Yahoo.

Fireplug in front of Bond St., where I briefly worked as a sushi chef trainee.

Subletting is a curious thing. You're looking for a stranger to make themselves at home in your home, amongst your furnishings. The stakes are high for the sublettee, materially and emotionally. You need to trust your sublettor.

So, when you go to interview for a sublet, the questions quickly become personal. Being fairly open and candid, people quickly learn quite a bit about me. The odd thing about this quick intimacy is that it isn't one-sided. The interviewer feels obligated to reciprocate with their own story.

Sudden candor is intense. The interview format fast-forwards through the usual formalities and skips right by the usual limits we place between public and private. I find myself caring about a group of people that I don't really know. I feel involved in their lives, but I'm not.

I've often complained about the anonymity of the city. This profound cliche runs like this: one never feels alone, yet one never connects with the mob around you. The more crowded the situation (ie. the subway), the more inappropiate or daring it is to make eye contact or talk with a stranger.

This dynamic is completely upended in the sublet interview. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

ps. the "Olive Oil Gelato/Copetto" at Otto Enoteca (near Washington Square) is superb. Skip the over-priced Italian small-plate dinner and just come for dessert.

Pub, New York, NY.

Cell phones are wonderful. Text-messaging Google is wonderful. Bicycle Messenger bags are wonderful. Job interviewing is wonderful. Sublet interviewing is wonderful. Google Calendar is wonderful. Google Maps is wonderful. Craigslist is wonderful.

Viviane says (something like), "I've never found a better spiritual exercise than searching for a new job. Who am I? What do I want? How do I present myself? Will I compromise my dreams? How do I account for what I've done? These are the questions that you confront in a job search."

From the Stanford Art Center/Museum

Had a wonderful lunch at the Iron Monkey in Jersey City, NJ. The music is angry rock, and it is seemingly run by college kids, but the food is great pub fare and we received the best table service I've had in years: warm, kind, genuine. Not what I expected. The furniture and art are wrought iron sculpture.

Visiting Jersey City and Hoboken was fascinating. It's amazing to see gentrification that is even more intense than Williamsburg.

From the Stanford Art Center/Museum

It's sad when a good blog goes dead.

I long enjoyed Caterina. Check out this post:

From this post.

But the blog I really miss is Ready Moe Rock Rex, a fantastic source of dance mp3s.

I'm moving from the SF Bay Area to NYC in the next couple of weeks. I'm looking forward to finding a whole new batch of favorite places and people. Here's a list of my favorite Bay Area stuff.

Number one coolest person I met in 2006: David Krashna, presiding judge at Alameda County Courthouse during my jury duty. A wiser, fairer, kinder, warmer person I cannot think of. Respect!

Nicest person: The pharmacist named Bill's at the 2145 Market St Walgreens. Saved my life.

Okina Sushi on Arguello. Keeps very odd hours. Humble, modest sushi. Down to earth, traditional Japanese atmosphere. Low prices.

Kabuto Sushi. Not far from Okina. More expensive, and the cooking style is much more decadent. Lots of super-complicated rolls, for example. The "house special" fish salads and fish plates are great!

Kirala. I haven't tried their sister restaurant Kirala 2 yet, but the original is the best sushi in the East Bay. Long lines and crowded noisy atmosphere, but the food is on point.

Kabana. Family run, dingy atmosphere, low prices, great food - this Pakistani restaurant is pretty much the definition of "hole-in-the-wall." Tikka fish & and naan are recommended.

Blackberry Bistro. Coconut curry noodles.

The Cheese Board & Arizmendi, related co-ops, have excellent pizza. The Cheese Board is also a fantastic fromagerie.

Wild Side West, my favorite bar is in Bernal Heights.

Favorite bookstores: Moe's, Green Apple, Black Oak Books and Cody's.

Best Salad: Cafe Intermezzo on Telegraph in Berkeley. I could survive for years, eating only from their small menu.

Best oyster fishery to visit: Hog Island, before they got all expensive.

Lake Anza is a great place to take a walk with a dog.

The Albany Bulb is a great art walk. This park/dump is a hotspot for local artists to do outdoor installations. You'll always discover something new and wonderful no matter how many times you go. Great place for a sunset.

Best place to see a movie: Parkway. Movie, pizza, beer. Now they have a sister in Albany.

Best theatre: The Paramount. Go for the architecture alone. Sit in the balcony - it's gorgeous.

Best grocery store in the entire universe: The Berkeley Bowl. Cheap (subsidiside by the city, I believe), fresh, incredibly wide selection. Rub elbows with real foodies. Food culture nexus. The best thing about the Bay.

La Peña Cultural Center is a fascinating place. Some of the best events are "private", ie. not publically listed on their calendar. Off the hook.

Tinkers Workshop. Drop by and check it out yourself.

Best pizza: North Beach Pizza.
Bocadillos, Basque Tapas. You must try the Basque wine called 'Exomin Etxaniz' (It's pronounced something like 'Show Me In Chinese').

Swan Oyster Depot, over-priced but nice.

Land's End Trail in San Francisco is a memorable walk.

Molinari's is a great deli in North Beach.

De Afghanan Kabob House serves Afghan Kabobs in the heart of 'Little Kabul,' Fremont's ethnic corner. Absolutely worth the trip to Fremont. Expect to wait 30 minutes for your food; don't expect to be able to sit.

Photo by kelco.

I'm greatly enjoying Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman. As a software engineer, I appreciate a structured approach to everything - even emotions (yes, I know). I look for basic principles everywhere, whether it is a Pattern Language of dating, or a theory of comic books.

So, Emotions Revealed is exactly up my alley. It summarizes years of research about facial expressions and the emotions they express. I'll write more about it later, when I'm farther along.

But I wanted to describe one "design pattern" of emotions that I've noticed. Emotional reactions always occur within a history. Let's say that A gets mad at B, because A feels that B has disregarded A's opinion. A's reaction will feel as though it is 'about' the present situation, a response to a single event. However, it will also be about any history of B disregarding the opinion of A, and A's entire history of having their opinion disregarded.

Ekman calls this an acquired emotional trigger.

One implication is: never argue the situation at hand, or otherwise ignore the broader scope. Because emotions always operate in a wider context than the present, so must any discussion of them. Know a person's triggers. A person usually develops 'a trigger' with good reason: it's never a fluke when a sensitivity is reinforced again and again.

A strong enough trigger is often set off falsely or in error - but the trigger itself points to a real and important problem regardless.

Emotions aren't rational. It's a pattern-matching mechanism, rather than a calculated reaction. Anger can feel like a punishment, but it is reasonable, not fair, not just.

One of the most interesting things that I've found so far in Ekman is the idea that emotions have a 'refractive period.' For example, when we become angry, there is a period in which we only hear what reinforces our emotion. We 'tune out' everything else. This serves (obviously) to exaggerate our reaction. During this time, it is difficult to try to defuse the situation through words.

I think we've all had the experience of feeling like someone we're arguing with is cherry-picking what to hear, turning our words against us or even deliberately misunderstanding us. I'm not convinced that this can entirely be attributed to a 'refractive period.'

But if it can, this really reverses how we think about belligerence.

Children of Men was very good. I'm really looking forward to reading some P. D. James now, though I realize most of her work is murder mysteries which are not my cup of tea.

It's dystopian scifi, I suppose, but it doesn't feel like a modern cyberpunk story. Despite all of the conventional post-apocalyptic elements, it feels much more like old-school scifi, such as Fahrenheit 451, 1984 or Brave New World. It doesn't revel in technology or cultural innovations - it cares about meaning and character.

There's something odd about the tone that I haven't figured out. It's thrilling, but it doesn't feel like a thriller. I guess the tone is genteel or stately, which is unexpected. Maybe it is an effect of Clive Owen's gentlemanly manner.

It's telling that one chase scene involves two cars being pushed through the mud. It's only partly for comic effect. It ends up being far more gripping than racing cars.

My favorite scene is when Owen's character is travelling across London to visit an uncle at the Ministry of Art (in the Battersea Power Station, ha ha). He passes through different London neighborhoods. One is a ongoing riot; in the next, the wealthy pass the day in the park with a band. It reminds me of The Diamond Age, another piece of scifi in which extreme wealth and harrowing desperation memorably rub shoulders. It is not a particularly original point, but the movie always makes its points in a very restrained way, which I appreciated.

The movie also pulls off constant references to Abu Ghraib imagery, without it ever feeling like a cheap liberal potshot.

For me, the most memorable moments in the film were ones of kindness, discussion, fellowship. As Owen guides mother (and, later, child) through danger, the question is always - how will people respond to them? By offering aid or with force?

Just saw Pan's Labyrinth. I'm sorry I overuse superlatives like 'absolutely great', because I should reserve them for a movie like this.

It feels like two movies. One plot is the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War; Franco's soliders are trying to mop up a nest of Republican resistance. The other plot is a fairy tale - a little girl's adventures with fairies.

The two plots intertwine beautifully. The horror of war serves to remind us that the monsters & high drama of fairy tales is more factual than fantastic. And the fairy tale frames the war story in terms of morality - courage & weakness, compassion & cruelty.

The whole movie is beautiful, but the visual imagination of the fairy tale elements surpasses itself. This is anything but the workmanlike art direction of your typical Hollywood fantasy. I wonder very much whether the artists behind this will have another chance to shine like this again.

With a live-action film like this, I'm not quite sure where the credit lies. IMDB says: Written & Directed by Guillermo del Toro, Cinematography by Guillermo Navarro, Production Design by Eugenio Caballero.

Gray Wave by Inka Essenhigh, 2002

I first encountered Inka Essenhigh in 1998. I walked into a gallery in Soho and was immediately struck by a painting in a back room. I spied it through a small window while walking by and begged to be admitted. My thought was: for four years, I have been looking high and low for a single contemporary artist to like - here she is.

I sat down on the floor of the gallery and wrote her a note then and there, offering to serve as an artist's assistant. Little did I know that she was already surrounded by a great deal of interest.

I quickly found more of her work. It was a virtuoso integration of Disney cartoons (fantasia), modern graphic design, surrealism, dreams, modern comics... it goes on and on. She was synthesizing so many visual styles and subject matter into an inevitable-seeming hybrid. For the first time in my life, I didn't have to work to like a painting.


First Prize by Inka Essenhigh, 2002

Her paintings are quite like my dreams: They're beautiful & fantastically creative. You sense an important meaning underlying them, but you never feel you've fully fathomed them.

Her work took a very different direction around 2003 or 2004 that I haven't come to appreciate yet. I think that's seems to be because she is moving towards Francis Bacon & traditional Surrealism. The influence as always been there, but she's never been as macabre as Bacon or as pointedly wierd as Surrealists like Matta.

I haven't seen her new work in person. I look forward to that. I find it kind of sad to be describe her new work in terms of her influences because she seemed to draw upon things without copying them.

Finding Warmth Together, by Kozyndan from their flickr.

Snobbery
I grew up around many snobs and I was one of them. By snobbery I mean those who look down on the majority of things and ideas as tasteless or inferior. I'm not talking about people who look down on other people, just things (especially art) and ideas.

It was a defining experience, and I've thought about it quite a bit since then. There was a positive side to it. I think of it now as a kind of price paid by the community for caring deeply about excellence, an artifact of cognitive dissonance. If you strive for and insist upon greatness, you begin to disdain what is not great.


Chapter 2 of the Tao.

The cost of snobbery (like so many sins) is mostly paid by those guilty of it. In dismissing a thing, you fail to appreciate whatever worth it has. It is your loss.

So, I'm a recovering snob. I'm always getting better at enjoying what I would have previously disdained. Which makes the world a more interesting place.

I have a new MC name - Whitey Tighty. A huge improvement over my old mc name.

Ancient Chinese glyphs. This is a composite of photos I took at the Asian Museum in San Francisco a few months ago. I selected our some of my favorite glyphs from a single scroll.


Another photo from the same show.


A while back, Kottke mentioned a discussion in the Typophile forums about designing a new letter/glyph/symbol. A 27th letter, or an original element of punctuation. I can't find that thread now, but it was great! Here are some "wildly original" characters I sketched today - pretty lame.

I am catching up on classic graphic novels with mixed results.


Strangers In Paradise Pocket Book 1 by Terry Moore, Page 175 (detail)

Slapstick soap opera. The writing is over-the-top, but the illustration style is very refined. Graphic novels balance words and pictures; most artists seem much more comfortable with one side of the equation than the other.

It is a book about (largely) women by a man. I kept wondering how exploitative it was - because that leads look like playmates.

Balancing comedy and sexuality is a funny thing. Comedies are rarely sexy. For example, comics & comic actors are usually so unattractive. Pretty much the only unattractive leading actors in Hollywood are comic. Kind of a cliche - people always wonder about why attractive people don't develop senses of humor. Anyhow, Terry Moore fits comedy and sexuality together with ease.

Overall, I don't think I'll finish the series. The misanthropy and pathos wore heavily on me.


The Frank Book by Jim Woodring, Page 270 (detail)

An absolute delight. Like TinTin, I can't imagine anyone being immune to the visual pleasure of reading these wordless stories.

Visually, I kept thinking about Lewis Trondheim's work, such as A.L.I.E.E.E.N., which is like an entire world of ugly dolls come to life. I adore Lewis' visual creativity, though his stories tend to bore me lifeless.

Story-wise, it was very reminiscent of Native American Trickster stories. (Trickster by Paul Radin is a wonderful collection of them, Trickster Makes This World by Lewis Hyde is nice discussion of Trickster tales. Also, Hyde's The Gift is an absolutely superb sociology of gift-giving.)

Like Trickster tales, the Frank stories are playful but have a dark streak. They are pervaded with cruelty and violence. It seems to me that violence can easily be made lighthearted and comic, but cruelty cannot.

Tangent: in an interview , Matt Groening mentioned a discovery he made about that while making the Simpsons - that beating up Homer was funny so long as we heard his cries of pain, but not the sounds of his assailant's anger or aggression. The audio had everything to do with whether violence came across as funny or horrible.

Back to Frank - there is an underlying intelligence to the stories. They clearly have meaning, but that meaning is never obvious. Partially by being wordless, the stories insist upon being decoded, like a game. But it is never an effort - they are very seductive. I can see reading them over and over again.

Jim Woodring has a blog and a website.


Black Hole by Charles Burns (detail)

Okay, the book is genius. But I kept thinking of Henry Darger. The obsessive style, the perversity,

Here's another great page:

Black Hole by Charles Burns (detail)

The text reads: 'Eliza sitting naked on a pink towel. So beautiful I could die. Concentrating, all focused in on her sketchbook, but aw, god... her tail. Her cute little tail moving slowly back and forth, making a fan shape in the dirt. She's the one. She really is. I know that now.'

The story reminded me of 'Dazed and Confused' - teens, sex, drugs, rock and roll, interminably hanging out - but with a different tone: a bad trip instead of mellow high.

Frank also reads like a hallucinogenic trip, but where Frank is spectacular visual hallucination, Black Hole is inward - the perversity of human nature twisted and exaggerated.

Black Hole was an uncomfortable read for many reasons. The visual style (inkwork that resembles woodcut) is completely compulsive. The characters are trapped in the plot like flies having their wings torn off. The closest we come to empathy for these teenagers is pity and fear on their behalf.

Like a David Lynch story, the world is one of surreal, sick banality.
But I find Lynch fun, hilarious, fascinating. Black Hole is a hell from which I was glad to emerge. What the difference?

I totally don't get Neil Gaiman's appeal. I just read Murder Mysteries, his collaboration with P. Craig Russell.


From The Cute Manifesto by James Kochalka, (Detail) (no page numbers)

Also, I read The Cute Manifesto by James Kochalka. It left me scratching my head. It's a mixture of short essays (rants, really) and comics (again, rants) about art, play, & life. It left me fairly cold. It seemed like flamebait and insecurity. There's a rabid defensiveness in the essays.

However, I liked these parts such as these two quotes:

'What every creator should do, must do, is use the skills they have right now.'

'Cezanne and Jackson Pollack (and many other great painters) were horrible draftsmen! ...Although they started out shaky and even laughable, they went on to create staggering works of art.'

Simple points, but important to keep in mind.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, page 123 (detail)


Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, page 134 (detail)

Two great panels from Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, which I mentioned yesterday. As you can see, she has a style of her own.

The quote that stays with me from the book is 'We had a huge, oversize coloreing book of E. H. Shepard's illustrations for The Wind In The Willows. Dad had read me bits of the story from the real book. In one scene, the charming sociopath Mr. Toad purchases a gypsy caravan.' (page 130)

I don't remember him as a 'charming sociopath.' Have to re-read that one. When it comes to being prickly, I recognize a fellow soul in Bechdel.

Bill Peet, An Autobiography, page 26 (detail).

I wish I could write in Bill Peet's voice as much as any other - that includes my favorite authorial voices, like Herodotus (translated by Aubrey Selincourt), Vonnegut, etc. He speaks simply without ever talking down to the reader. The opposite of pretension.

Also, he can draw. The illustration above is perfect, especially the boy, the sawhorse, the saw: what a musical group of angles!

Other recent reading:


So, each book on that list points (in one way or another) to the kind of books I'm always looking for. I would translate that list thus:

The project of selling a car let me indulge today in my lifelong fantasy of taking commercial product photos / being a stylist for a shoot. It didn't turn out that well...

My lame Basquiat rip-off.

Osamu Tezuka, Life Of Buddha, Vol. 2, Page 227 (detail)

Songs I am listening to lately:
Amy Winehouse - Rehab (Hot Chip Vocal)
Band Of Horses - The Funeral
Bobby Taylor - It's Funny
Cat Power - The Greatest
Ghislain Poirier - Don't Smile, It's Post Modern
Ghislain Poirier - La Blessure
Irma Thomas - I Need Your Love So Bad
Johnny Otis - Hey Boy! I Want You
Jose Gonzalez vs. The Roots - Heartbeats vs. In The Music (Certified Bananas Mashup)
Lee Fields Feat. The Expressions - Honey Dove
Paul Kalkbrenner - Gia 2000 (Modeselektor Rmx)
Southside Break Crew - Freshest Jam
The Hole In The Wall Gang - Apache King
Turbulence - Notorious (really amazing)

Song of the year
Blahzay Blahzay - Danger

Favorite albums of the year

Other
Soul Sides - Oliver Wang's soul music blog is still my favorite.

Osamu Tezuka, Ode To Kirihito, page 377

I've just finished the wonderful Ode To Kirihito, an 800+ page graphic novel by Osamu Tezuka. I'm glad Vertical is translating these. The story - the characters especially - is fascinating.

It is genre fiction (medical thriller?), but not in the negative sense. It is funny how that phrase - genre fiction - is usually pejorative. If I had to describe Kirihito in one word I would chose provocative - another term that has a negative connotation. One usually finds only the cheapest art described as provocative, ie. art that is indecent, insulting or flame-bait.

I use it in the sense of stimulating. Take for example the portrayal of the scientific and political processes in the Japanese medical establishment. Neither the science or politics is simplified or romanticized. It's not unlike a season of (the wonderful) The Wire, in giving a clear-eyed look at the fallible side of human nature and institutions.

The story's most fantastic element is the disease around which the plot turns. The bodies of its victims are quickly twisted into animal-like forms, until they are half-animal, half-human, like Egyptian gods.

This - the animalizing disease - works in a few ways. It serves to point up the animal side of humans (recalling The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris), particularly our capacity for violence, tyranny and irrationality. It also embodies superficiality, and leads to the themes of ostracism & xenophobia (a distinctly Japanese preoccupation?). It is also just visually interesting.

When I was reading Tezuka's Life of Buddha, I was struck by the reverent, wise nature of the story. But I attributed this to the material. Reading Kirihito, I see the same pervading love of humanity. Its characters are desperate but never debased, violent but never evil. It reminds me of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote about never writing villains into his novels (in a preface - I always liked Vonnegut's prefaces best).

One example is Urabe, a doctor who rapes both of the main female characters. Its hard to think of a novel or film where this wouldn't be the defining aspect of his character. But it isn't in Kirihito - his part is much larger than that. Tezuka presents him not as a figure of evil to be reviled, but as a lost soul to be mourned over and wondered about.

This is not a failure of compassion for women on Tezuka's part. Indeed, I was fascinated by the absence of sexism in the story. Perhaps I was surprised because he is the father of Manga, such an irredeemably sexist genre or medium. This is one of the many differences between him and those who followed in his footsteps.