Writing in 2009 (Not Only)

I didn't end up graduating with the English degree I never declared, but I came out of high school knowing the nuances around participles and gerunds. I haven't seen Charlie Kaufman's new one yet, but I knew what a synecdoche was when I heard the title. As I climb over the boxes of notebooks in my closet, ex-Austin tech writer Marion Winik always pops into my head, talking about being one of those kids who stored milk crates full of spiral-bounds. I wrote cowboy stories in first grade, stick-figured protagonists with stetsons and circle hands, fingers popping out like Keith Haring sunbeams. Wrote for the school newspaper. Fattened envelopes to friends scattered about the world.

I wrote articles and copy for New Texas Magazine during its 25th-anniversary heyday. I've been writing web site content, and documenting software development lifecycle drama, since 1997. I haven't been short on paid gigs - what I lack is the constitution and cred enjoyed by writers who publish. Original works, born from the cracklings between their eyes.

I've yet to write just to have published something my own. It haunts me. I need 2009 to be different.

Have Yourself a Loony Family Pizza Christmas.

As of 10 min. ago. Lovin' it.

Merry Happy Holidays Everyone

'Tis the season, yet again. Touchdown.

A Public Service WTF From Natalie Portman and Rashida Jones.

NATALIE PORTMAN & RASHIDA JONES Speak Out Once More by Natalie Portman

Last Year's Christmas Card Shoot

We were supposed to do our Christmas photo last weekend, but too much going on. Hopefully I'll be more prepared in the next few days. I pulled out last year's pics to remind myself of what was narrowly missed. Just getting everyone in the same room was like training hungry puppies to perform A Chorus Line.

Piper decided to dress for the occasion.

By the end of the day, Butters and I were exhausted.

Scout doing her best "Calvin and Hobbes."

Francesca looking her usual professional modelesque self. 

But I don't think we quite fit in the frame.

"I don't want to lie on the floor." "Please, Pipie, just one picture."

"No, really. I don't like this."

"OK, you asked for it."

Of course, as you know, this is the one we went with:

Mlaaaary Christmas, everyone. Next one's out soon. I can't wait.

Happy Birthday To Me

Present to self: Honeybomb, one of my fave Bob Schneider masterpieces. Bonus thing that means something to me but not really to anyone else: Will Taylor and his classical mates played at our wedding.


Extra Bonus Gift: the Mermen drop their Honeybomb!

When I Think About the Scala Girls Choir

Cribbed from eefers. The only way I can hear the Divinyls without switching the station or walking out of the club.

Love it? Then check it (you started it, Tori):

Sept. Visit to Natural History Museum

When I was 5 or so, Mom went to work for Senator Byrd. One of my earliest childhood memories is of this elephant.

"Daddy, what's you favorite animal?"  This one.

OH HAI NOM NOM

Terrible lizards and their successors mingle.

My fave dinosaur at NatHis (just now made that abrev up) is this very big fish. He ate another slightly smaller but still very big fish.

Yum. Wow. Urrp.

Enormous ancient blue sapphires. Like 90% of all gemstones on display in Western museums, these were obtained (robbed) from India. They cut, drilled and set these gems by hand . Feeling down? Compare your lot to an Agra diamond driller's, sitting 10 hours a day cross-legged on the ground, under the balmy Bharat sun.

The Hope diamond. South Parks' raison d'être for the Obama/McCain election.

Not all the world's diamonds come from India, of course - only the world's most magnificent.

Les Popotames et le Mammoth Énormee Tres Mauvais

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.
This inspired me to film the girls and translate their stories into French captions. Every time I hear her say "very tremendously bad mammoth!" I fall to the floor. (It sounds like a hybrid of 'mauvais' and 'méfait')

Congrats America! Love, Your Friends in India

Via Spiegel:

"In India, a sand sculpture of US President-elect Barack Obama has become quite an attraction. India hailed Obama's 'extraordinary journey' to the White House."

I thought we couldn't. Apparently, we can.

Yeah, I'm feeling it. Feeling the love. The relief. Palpable.

The way "mandate" was used before was incorrect usage of the word. Today, we can use "mandate" in its correct, intended usage (e.g. "the mandate that G.W. Bush claimed to have received from the previous electorate was exposed as mere rhetoric in light of more than double the electoral votes Obama won  yesterday. No president has more clearly been handed a genuine mandate since LBJ's landslide win, 44 years ago.")

Now I don my gay apparel, dancing in the streets, gonna cause talk and suspicion, trumpeting my mixed metaphorathon.


This is where I heard the announcement. AN historic night, truly, indeed.

Literal Translation of Chili Peppers "Under the Bridge"

(Overdub written/sung by Dustin McLean, lifted from Funny or Die)

Inside the Hirschhorn Museum/Gallery/Looky Building Thing

I mostly love this museum for its lockable lockers, gift shop full of cool kid gifts, and pure freedom of movement. Other than no flash photog or touching the art, you can go and do where/whatever you fancy. In an ambling circular fashion.

Basement level. This was a large rectangle of intestine-shaped clear gel. I know.

Clothes hangers strung together. File under "well, huh. I could do that."

A nice Lichtenstein collection came through Austin last spring - saw it w/Tim.  So I didn't linger as long here.

Upstairs, finally, something actually surprising and delightful.  One of their de Kooning's "Woman" series, 1965.

It was always easy for me to love Frank Stella, with soothing geometrics and craaaazy '60s colors.

English on one curved side, cyrillic on the other. This was my favorite piece of the day, if I had to choose.  

This was my favorite pic of the day, if I had to choose.

I leave you with 3 short videos that perfectly reproduce how I felt, wandering through the gallery that day.

This was the featured exhibit. Mesmerizing.

Shot from the hip as I walked around, including a glimpse at a hypnotic linear Rube Goldburg video on the wall of Peter Fischli and David Weiss' The Way Things Go.

The original:

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The Hirschhorn Scupture Garden

Joseph Hirschhorn (uranium mining magnate and ravenous art collector) and his wife Olga Zatorsky hung out with Lady Bird and then-Pres LBJ. You didn't know how to spell their last name. The extra "h" threw you off.

Shaking hands at the museum's groundbreaking, 1969.

It's next to the Castle. Here I am feebly trying to capture the rose gardens on the way.

   

Walking around the side on my way to the sculpture garden. Those enormous pipes are  suspended in the air with wire tension alone. It rises about 20 meters from the ground, past the roof of the building.

Yoko Ono's The Wish Tree for Washington, DC, 2007. You're asked to whisper something to the tree. There's a path so you can get up near it and aim for its ear. No, I can't tell you, or it won't come true.

One of Aristide Maillol's Three Nymphs.

Rodin's Crouching Woman

You can see how the garden is sunk into the Mall. Across the street is the main museum (left, in the trees), and the Castle, with Mark di Suvero's massive red steel construction guarding the walls.

The business end of that gold ball in the previous pic. Arnaldo Pomodoro (Arnold Tomato?)'s amazing gear-ey bronze, Sphere no. 6 ( Sphere Within a Sphere).

Henry Moore's Reclining Figure from one end of the fountain pond...

and from the other end. She changed a bit along the way.

20 years ago, this used to be David Smith's own little corner (see cubist polished stainless steel piece two pics up). Now it's Miro's. With the museum behind. Next, what it looked like inside.

DC, Day Two: Lisa's Rehersal Dinner

 

It was at the Metropolitan Club, a block from the New Exec. Office Building. There was a slide show in an anteroom, with rotating pics of Nick and Lisa as children (mostly Dhaka photos, one with me and Lis circa 1975). One of Lisa's best friends remarked full volume as she walked in, "What kind of stuck-up, conservative, stuffy place is this?!" But it was beautiful inside, all marble and guilt gilt. Like the set of Monty Python's Cocktail Bar ("More lemming, sir?" "Oh, just a squeeze, Harry" [SQUEAK SQUEAK SQUEAK]).

 

Lisa was struck by Francesca: "...his incredibly beautiful, poised, amazing oldest daughter, who is just such an utter delight."

Francesca and I snuck off into the library, which was huge, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves: 

"I don't think we're supposed to be in here, Dad." "I know. Smile."

She makes the world glow.

Yes, that's the Virgin Queen behind me there.

 

And an endless magazine rack, updated daily.

Dinner was amazing: Washingtonian haut cuisine, including a beautifully constructed vegetarian number.

 

 
 

The evening cranked up with round after round of speeches, accolades, blessings, and toasts, ending with Lisa and Nick giving out prizes. I tied Maude and her spouse for "people with the same wedding anniversary." Got me a big box of liquor-filled chocolates.

I wish these pics did justice to how gorgeous Lisa and her friends and family looked. Such a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful evening.