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B2's got a lingering cough from that cold. I just gave him some kiddie Mucinex, and am staying up a bit to keep an eye on him, until the medicine kicks in.

Sun-Day

I just liked the quality of the light this morning. This is facing east, over the lake.

Morning Glory

I went out to snag some groceries, into the blustery, beautiful morning. Although clouds are holding sway to the west, to the east, the sun was coming up and lighting up the sky majestically. I snapped some pix (naturally), will post them later. I was amused to see a hardcore biker also snapping shots of downtown. It lent itself to it -- with all the wind, the air was very crisp and clear.

I snapped a bunch of shots on the way to and from the grocery store -- a mini photo safari. Here and there, detritus from the St. Patrick's Day parade (yesterday) -- kelly green flotsam and jetsam, although not too much, thankfully.

I snagged a trio of 12o-page notebooks. I'm still frustrated by my lack of a laptop, and am, at least in the short run, going to write longhand on first drafts. The pain in the butt of longhand will be offset by the ability to write whenever and wherever I like.

B2 has that chest cold that's been going around (hell, I've still got it, too).

More than a Feeling

B2 loves Boston's "More Than a Feeling." It's so cute to hear him singing it (not really getting the words, but nailing the melody).

Chilly and blustery today -- rain and heavy winds. Good night to stay in and stay warm. Soup weather!

Watched "The Right Stuff" with B1 -- he loves anything with astronauts and space.

St. Johnny of Rotten

John Lydon (aka, Johnny Rotten) completely rocked my teen world. I loved his snarky persona, his killer gaze, his Dickensian anarchic ragamuffin sense of style, his ability to almost effortlessly take the piss at any given moment. Fabulous. I remember first hearing his name when Sid Vicious died, and I can remember reading their names in the newspaper, and feeling this sense of terror -- who would have names like that? "Johnny Rotten?" "Sid Vicious?" "Sex Pistols?" I was 9 when I first encountered those names, and it was years later until I actually listened to the Sex Pistols -- bought them on cassette. For me, it was a revelation. I can vividly remember driving along Route 224, popping the cassette into my car's player, listening to "Never Mind the Bollocks" for the first time and thinking "Wow. This is awesome stuff." I had avoided them before then, because of the whole killer reputation of the band, their infamy. I just assumed it would be noise, not worth my time. But it was sooooo good. It was precisely the itch that I needed to be scratched at that time, when I was just stalking around town by myself. I became a Punk in that transformative moment, devoured the music, now referred to as "old-school" -- but to me, simply Punk. I loved that he had his own unique look, something quintessentially him, a kind of anti-fashion fashion that was quickly overshadowed by people trying to "look Punk" when the truth was that there WAS no look to Punk -- or the point was not having a look, but simply looking unique. And he managed that masterfully. Rotten taught me that so many people are easily outraged and frightened, and their judgments of the merit or lack of merit of something were meaningless, and that the only way to really suss something out was to do it yourself, and to think for yourself. That so often the fearful were afraid to try anything new and odd and different, and locked themselves into tiny cages.

Sure, Lydon lapsed into self-parody later, but his original incarnation was just magnificent. He's one of the few pop culture figures I'll honestly mourn when he finally dies, just because he's so damned fun. I read his biography years ago, found him curious and thoughtful behind his snarly exterior.

My Darling Clementine

I planted a seed from a clementine a few months ago, put it in a cup. Had a bunch of clementines, ate'em, enjoyed'em. One of them had a seed, and I kept it. A little project for B1 and me. I put some marbles in the bottom, for drainage, then put soil atop, and then planted the seed. Wasn't sure what would happen, if anything, but I would periodically water the soil, had the little cup on the windowsill. A hope, a promise, new life, new love. That kind of thing.

I was pleased to see that yesterday, a seedling has sprouted -- a slender finger of green. I'm very, very pleased.

St. Stanley of Kubrick

I'll proceed chronologically with my patron saints, like ones who inspired me earliest. One of the earliest was Stanley Kubrick. I was genuinely sad when Kubrick died -- all day, just forlorn.

I loved his meticulous approach to movie-making, which I know drove actors bananas, had him branded an eccentric, and limited his output to, what, 13 movies? And people may have qualms about his work, his very dark view of human nature, but the quality of his vision is so pronounced, so striking. His background as a photographer shows up so clearly in his cinematic work -- attention to lighting, angle, framing -- everything. I always say to people that you can do a still frame of almost any shot in a Kubrick movie and it will look good. Because he just paid such attention to that. His use of music and point of view, just amazing.

As a teen, I would foist Kubrick movies on my hapless chums, telling them "Oh, you gotta see this." They'd politely watch the movies, but I could tell I was the only one really grooving on his work. They were watching the movies-as-movies, and I think I was watching them as works of (visual) art.

While my major was in audio-visual production (surely inspired by Kubrick), and I'm a fair hand with a camera (including a video camera), I never had any pretensions of following Kubrick's footsteps. But his way of shooting movies absolutely informed my aesthetic of how I watched movies -- he put so much attention to filmcraft that I soaked that up, and applied it to movie-watching, and he made me pay attention to film directors, ones I liked, ones I didn't, and why. That aesthetic has stayed with me, will always be with me. I appreciate a well-shot movie, above and beyond the contents of the story itself. I like movies that look good, and will take note of directors who have that cinematic eye. I think his cinematic eye influenced my fiction-writing, how I construct scenes. I pay incredible attention to that, even though it's all in my head, and down on the page. People who read my stuff comment on how visual it is, and I am sure it's owing to my love of Kubrick's moviemaking, and that sense that everything in the scene is there for a reason.

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I saw this when walking home, paused, had to catch it. Intersection of North and Sedgwick.

Patron Saints

I have a number of masculine "patron saints." Various guys who have inspired me over the years. I won't say "heroes" or even "idols," because I don't really have proper heroes or idols (just not my style), but there are a number of guys who do (and have, and continue to) inform my aesthetic, who I admire for a variety of reasons which I'll try to articulate as I think about them in turn.

Hipster Love(tm)

Hipster couple kissing. They didn't really have a fraction of that kind of passion in their kissery, mind you. It was like an ironically-detached equivalent PDA, however.

In retrospect (heh, in retrosexualspect), the above is more like how I kiss. When I kiss you, you know you've been fucking kissed.

Thoughts

Rainy morning. We're due for thunder showers today. The only exciting thing about it was the frontal boundary came through so clearly, this line in the clouds, like a tsunami in the sky, bringing the rain. Kinda cool. But not cool enough to photograph, although I thought about it a moment or two.

There was some Hipster Love(tm) at the corner of Clark and Dickens -- this skinny, bearded fellow and his diminutive babe, both in their Chuckies and assorted regalia, naturally, snogging at the corner bus stop like it was VE Day all over again, instead of just the morning commute. Now, I'm all for romantic love, mind you (and believe me, I most definitely am), but PDAs in the morning commute, I dunno. Too much and too little at the same time.

I had some good ideas of stuff I need to work on, writing-wise. Impious ideas. I'm going to play with them a bit. I have been avoiding writing about writing on here because I hate writers writing about writing (much like actors acting in a movie about acting, or dancers dancing about dancing, or musicians in a musical about musicals -- that kind of self-referential stuff makes me gag). But I've got something that is enticing me at the moment, and going to play with it a bit.

Oh, the City is trying to fuck me at the moment. Some kind of disconnect between the online traffic ticket-paying option and the actual office. I paid my ticket many weeks ago, and got ANOTHER notice in the mail, with an additional $50 tacked on because I hadn't paid. But I'd already paid online, and when the first notice went out, I included a copy of the receipt from that fucking payment. The bureaucrats apparently decided that wasn't enough, and are shaking me down again. Pissing. Me. Off. The Donkey's ghost, haunting me from beyond the grave. I may pay AGAIN with a notice saying I have already paid, include yet another copy of it, and complain about it to the Department of Revenue and the Mayor's Office.

Gonna listen to Alice Cooper today, I think -- their first several albums. I started with "Billion Dollar Babies," one of their best...

Best Foot Forward

Facing nasty weather wearing weatherproofed suede.
60th Street and Blackstone.

ANTM 15

The 15th season (oh, sorry, CYCLE) of ANTM began last night! Yay! Crazed models, clawing at each others' egos! I don't have any favorites, yet, and don't even remember the gals' names so much at this point. I don't think there's a theme this year, except that they brought in a 13th "wildcard" model, named Renn -- this blown-away acid casualty sinister-looking model gal. Not sure the logic of bringing her into it, what the selection process was and why she was added outside of the usual process. No idea.

There were the usual pot-stirrers -- the "bad guy" models in there, making everybody's lives hell. I was pleased that one of the semifinalists, Hallie, a self-confessed trust fund brat from Tennessee (who's like Cybill Shepherd's niece or something) -- I was pleased that she didn't make it. The look of disbelief and hate on her face when she realized she wasn't going to be on the show was classic. Like "OMG! This can't happen to ME! I get everything I want!"

Similarly, the long-faced gal with the nose ring (pierced through the center of her nose, like a bull) and twin lip rings didn't make it, either (she had a pretty enough face, in an unremarkable kind of way, if you took the metal out of her mug) -- but she had this look of hurt and bewilderment at not getting picked. And managed the first blur-cam shot of the season as she curled up coochtastically in a corner and cried at her misfortune.

The makeovers were pretty standard -- requisite amounts of tears, shock, and over-the-top elation. Surprisingly, the rivalries and hatreds have started right out of the box -- either some of the gals are serious psychos, or they pumped in angry gas in there or something (sleep deprivation, maybe?) because some of them were already totally feeling the hate for one another almost immediately. No stew-n-brew, but just in-your-face loathing.

There's a pretty gal from Arkansas whose back story was cringe-inducing. Yes, down with Jesus. Yes, met a 22-year-old man in her church (when she was 16, I think is what I heard). Yes, they had sex (her first time -- abstinence teaching, right?) Yes, she got pregnant, and is now a mother of a one-year-old (I think she's 18, now). I missed whether she and El Creepo got married or are just shacking up, but she complained at how their church hasn't accepted them in the wake of that (naturally, following in the forgiving steps of Christ, as we all know all those evangelicals are). So, she's leaving behind her 1-year-old to try for this modeling gig -- WWJD? He'd try to become ANTM! It's an Arkansas Fairy Tale, right there.

One of the contestants, Gabrielle (remembered her name), seemed like a tough-but-smart little snarkling, who bizarrely resembles the character Matt from "Nip/Tuck." I mean, she really, really does, and it kind of freaks me out (of course, Matt's character always freaked me out, anyway -- he looked bizarre, and acted more bizarre than he looked). But they blonded her up at the makeover and it looks better on her. She seems pretty smart, but has that tough-as-nails look to her that is kinda spooky. She's from St. Louis. I can't find pix of the contestants, yet, so I'll post them when I can, and you can see how she looks like Matt.

The next episode has them nude modeling as their first challenge, so it'll be a blurfest, obviously. That always makes me chuckle -- Oh! They're NUDE! But you can't see it, because it's network television, and they're BLURRY! Really, the nudity is beside the point, anyway -- it's more fun to watch them agonize over each others' performances.