Consortium of Seven: Year 2

  by whiteray   Every music hunter knows the deal: You’re flipping through a bin of CDs or LPs, looking for nothing in particular, nearly hypnotized by the click-click of the CDs or the floof-floof of the record jackets, and then you stop. And go back one or two or three spots. And you pull out a CD or LP and scan the jacket.  You have no idea why that particular album grabbed your attention. As you examine it, you sometimes see something on the jacket, or maybe something in the credits clicks: a name, a place, maybe a song title. You look at the price, and if it’s reasonable for something you don’t seem to know about, you set it aside and it goes home with you.  And when it’s in the player or on the turntable, maybe it works for you. Sometimes, it’s good stuff. Most of the time, I’d guess, it’s just okay music. And every once in a while, it’s something that you really needed, even if you didn’t know what it was. The universe is funny like that.  On a ...

My week in pictures. You won’t see that I finished a class which means that constant working-weekends since January have finally ended. Or, that I’ve opened the bottle of Crystal Skull vodka Chuck gave me for my birthday, weirdly smooth... but, hey, it’s really good! Mainly,  I want the bottle to serve as a vase.  Pictured above: Front yard palm flower husks, Pretty in a brown gigantic way. The creek is terribly dry, never this dry in 17 years.  A turtle came through, it appears. Worried for the fish.  Sap. Which always reminds me of Bud Cort’s great line in Bernice Bobs Her Hair. Pretty arrangement by Nature. Neighbor’s fine specimens Little limes Friday night light was amazing. Sandy’s path. The backyard trees. It's so dry, but the contrast of grays and taupes and greens is beautiful to me. My student was too sad to school, so I let her wash the stuffed animals. She perked up some.  ~Dorothy Dolores

We’re nearing the end of this list... During the time I’ve been doing working through it, I’ve become aware of how entirely inadequate a mere one hundred artists is. Even if they are all – in my opinion – “greats.” Tempting as it is to attempt a second hundred, I fear that way madness lies. Perhaps a sideways look in the future will be in order. Still two entries to go on this list though. 81. František Kupka (Czech Republic, 1871-1957): Music , 1936 Franz got an honourable mention in the yellow-themed blog back in autumn for his incredible yellow self portrait. For that incredible painting alone he is one of the greats. Whilst he could clearly manage such a traditional style of painting, he also experimented successfully with industrial-style & abstract images. Music has everything I like in abstract art forms: geometry, a satisfyingly limited palette (especially darks or greys) & quite honestly, a semblance of recognisable forms. I’m an abstract-lite fan. 82. Margaret MacDona...

        A wide swath of themes this time.        T his past week saw me alternately too busy for much viewing, or in a sleepy state where I was revisiting familiar items rather than watching something new to me. This included:     Richard Donner's 1987, franchise-launching. Lethal Weapon , which remains fun but requires much of one's analytical ability be shut down to keep the film from jumping the rails. Just enjoy the action, the birth of what would become franchise cliches, seeing Mel Gibson well before we found out that he really is crazy, and otherwise contemplate how it views 34 years later for those of us who saw it when it was new, including how we each processed Danny Glover's character's getting "too old for this shit" as a 50 year-old then vs now. Oh, man, to remember that I was 26 when that came out. Oof!     The original (1974) Taking of Pelham One Two Three , had a snarky, tough guy cop...

Happy Middle Of May, everyone.  We only have two weeks until summer here in the Northern Hemisphere, so let's enjoy it until it gets hot and hurricane seasons starts (or Tony La Russa goes completely nuts and declares that batters should never swing at 2-1 because of some old-school unwritten rules nonsense and sorry, I have to rant about my White Sox, an excellent modern team, being led by a steroids-enabling relic who hasnt managed in a decade). But anyway. From the classy to the sublime to the schlock, here we go! _______________________________________ A lot of good writers have transitioned from the Internet to print work.  It's not a surprise at all that Jenny Lawson, a fantastic Texan writer about her own mental issues (also, the time she bought a giant metal chicken and used it to comedically torment her husband Victor , a story that I CANNOT believe is 10 years old this year) blurbs this because..I mean, damn. Allie Brosh is brutally honest and funny and makes you cry...

  It’s finally here. The end of total lockdown. Am I ready? Absolutely not. I like my burrow. I don’t wanna play with others. We’ve fashioned a comfortable little routine. Week days, work. Evenings, spend time alone together. Weekends, yard and house work and, sometimes, an adventure. The adventures are mostly food and view related. They require us to travel along Highway 101 thirty to forty-five minutes south. Which is a mini-vacation in itself. People come here from all over the developed world to drive this highway. My sweetheart and I, we just buckle up and go, the little dog in her back seat safety perch and the cat at home, guarding the house from whatever intrusions he fears. Probably a bug. Talk about privileged lives. We ain’t got much but we’ve got it all. Former neighbors gave us the idea. They liked to go to a certain restaurant, get takeout, drive two minutes to the ocean, and watch the waves while they ate. As it happens, that modest restaurant makes the best fish and...

This week's blog is in the form of a video I compiled and uploaded to YouTube.  Bonus:  I've been searching for clips or stills from any of Sheila's rare film appearances, and I think that the woman in the funny hat in  this bit of archived movie  may well be her.  Next week: A post in the "Read Instead" series Garbo