These are roughly in chronological order.

1958

Celebrating her Oscar win for 1958’s “The Three Faces of Eve”

Look at the way he’s looking at her.

A bit of context for the above photo, Joanne decided to go back to school to get her B.A., and graduated from Sarah Lawrence in 1990 alongside their granddaughter Clea.  Paul Newman gave the commencement address.

Newman was an avid car racer, and Joanne hated it.  I read one anecdote that said one time she fell out of bed and broke her collarbone and he said “I don’t want to hear any more complaining about the dangers of racing.”

They were married for fifty years, until his death in 2008.  They mostly lived in Connecticut and did not consider themselves “Hollywood” people, which is probably why their marriage lasted.  Joanne also said that looks fade, but the secret was to marry someone who made you laugh every single day.

One of these days I’m going to write a post where I rank all the vampire stuff out there.  Vampire Diaries is not good, kiddos. Not good. At. All.

Instead watch Taylor Swift and Bill Hader in a Twilight parody. I laughed, aloud.

Laura Ingalls Wilder and the pioneer mentality is taken to a logical conclusion in the modern problems of gentrification.

Most victims of violent crimes are not white. This is particularly true for “hate” crimes. We are far more likely to be hurt by the food we eat, the cars we drive, or the bicycles we ride than by the people we live among. This may be lost on us in part because we are surrounded by a lot of noise that suggests otherwise.

Biss articulates something that I have felt for a very long time, (ever since I began to explore and love Los Angeles) but have been left largely unable to articulate.  The subject matter is one that I have felt timid when approaching or discussing for fear of apparent or real racism.  College only amplified this fear when my enlightened ass began to get annoyed at the barrage of Racial Reconciliation meetings, and the endless attempts to bring together these “opposing forces” on campus.  I began to protest that this wasn’t a problem that kids growing up in California faced.  The conversations could become paralyzing, discussing race relations from a middle-class white background entirely devoid of integration.  I feel as if college bred racism, I know for a fact that it certainly bred resentment.

“It’s not racism if it’s true,” how often I have repeated that when motoring along behind a slow Asian female driver, buzzing past them snarling. Or heard someone remark while watching a home security ad, “Oh of course it’s a middle aged white man breaking into that home.” (Perhaps he used to work at Goldman-Sachs?) Racism can often feel safe, comfortable, smug.

This year, because of my extensive traveling I have answered many questions about the area in which I live, and have come to the conclusion that I live in a bubble, removed from any urban environment and from anyone who is different. I drive from my home to my job, to my stores.  There is no walking to and from a corner market or engagement with anyone I do not know intimately.   This isolation from others is a product of my living environment, and something I have been considering in the possibility of moving to another city.  There’s something tactless and embarrassing about a white girl attempting to find a more wholly integrated city to partake in, but I believe it may be important enough.  

My feelings about Portland (6.2% black population), which come to me through a year or two’s reading of the internet (which functions much like a large reflecting pool upon which various threads of thought are visible, and it takes time to gather them all up and see what you have) and through conversations with various friends, have lead me to believe it is a white city where white artistic people live.  I mentioned this to a friend while I was in Kansas City (22.7% black population) and he said ‘That sounds great!’, but I can’t shake the idea that there is some sickness in moving to a place where everyone is the same, and happily so.

“I think you should define the word gentrification,” my husband tells me now. I ask him what he would say it means and he pauses for a long moment. “It means that an area is generally improved,” he says finally, “but in such a way that everything worthwhile about it is destroyed.”

This is interesting to me, given what happened in Los Angeles’ neighbourhood of Silverlake over the past four years. I first remember the stirrings that Echo Park and the adjacent area was becoming hip, and now it has already lost it’s cool edge, but the rents have risen, the area is mid-transformation, and it has become a mecca of insufferability.   

I am as guilty as anyone of the wrongs Biss outlines, the adherence to fear and to allowing Fear Mongering by others to affect my opinion of others and of places.  Though one wishes to avoid such bleak attempt as a college professor who told us that he moved his white family into an entirely black neighbourhood, or my parents who attended an entirely black church until my sisters reported that after a year, none of the other kids would interact with them.  (This all is interesting when I consider how much importance I place on adoption as a necessary element of life.) 

Ted and I talked about this extensively during my visit to Chicago. His neighbourhood, Pilsen, was predominantly Hispanic, though it had been originally settled by Polish immigrants.  We walked the streets and the only other white people I ever saw were mid-20’s white artistic types. Ted said that he was worried the area would gentrify, that it was already beginning, and immediately acknowledged that his presence there was a part of that.

What is to be done, then? Like Biss, I want to believe in the promise of what real diversity and unification might mean, but have not yet discovered how to actualize this process in my heart and life.

Eagle pose is begun by standing straight, feet planted firm. Swing arms overhead and bring them down quickly, crossing right under left to bring them to prayer in front of the face. Then shifting weight to the left leg, one sits, bringing the right leg high over the left, twisting the leg.  It’s a relaxing and strong pose once you get into it. 

______________

I saw the worst movie today, I had to screen it for film.com, and it made me too sad to want to write anything.  Bikram Choudhury, the founder of Bikram yoga says that he believes 90% of women are born good and 10% are born bad, and that 90% of men are born bad, and only 10% are born good.  I’m starting to agree with him.

In other news, I found a Blur tape at Amoeba tonight, and heard Alex James say: “I’ve got long legs and a good hair cut, I don’t think you can underestimate the importance of those things.”

Good research for a novel, I must say.  Writing isn’t as fun as it used to be, but I’m also not as bad a writer as I used to be. I can’t wait to be 40 and look back and laugh at how terrible I am now, and show my daughters some of my old diaries.  I think I will have a lot of good advice for them, but they’ll laugh, in the end they will have to make their own mistakes.  In these fast-forward memories of the future, we always live in Ross and Ruth’s old house in Redlands and it is always so beautiful there.

I wish I had a picture of that house for you with the long driveway and the mountains behind it, the small tiled ante-room with 60 years worth of desert glass clinging to the shelves. The antique farm sink in the wash room and cold deep freeze filled with hand-cranked ice cream.  The dove hutch with the faulty latch, and the railroad you could ride in next door, and always kittens at every corner waiting to be caught and held.

Also reminded of this:

Lucille 2: You must have scrimped and saved for these.

I usually let her posts pile up in Google Reader and the rip through them as fast as I can, because I adore the pictures, but the writing smacks of the most querulous attempts at humour and pretentious bullshit.  Now believe me, I recognize terrible writing since I can, of course, read my own writing, which is sometimes terrible and sometimes authentic.

AS I SEE IT, OPTIONS:

a) just stop reading it.
b) continue as I am, now that I’ve shared.

Notes for the day:

• Interviewing Abbie Cornish tomorrow about Bright Star.  Bright Star is actually my favourite movie this year. More on that when I’ve thought a bit more, but it’s easily the most beautiful film of the year.

• Karina Longworth was praised today because she doesn’t “waste anyone’s time.”  That struck me as valuable advice.

• Pauline Kael refused to call movies “films” because she felt it was elitist. This struck me as infinitely useful. I call them talkies. I love movies. I love the way they can make you feel, I love how the best ones are beautiful down to the very details, how 50 or 5,000 people work together to make something good out of literally nothing but an idea someone once had.

To quote Peter Sarsgaard (who, given our recent interaction, only seems to know one word for “similar”) it does not seem “analogous.” (Sarsgaard has two cats. He said so. He also told a story about how Dirk Bogarde had a motorcycle and chaps and never rode it but would go sit on it in his garage and ask people to take pictures.  This amused him greatly. I wrote this whole Vanity Fair style opening to my article, like.. “Sarsgaard immediately puts the room at ease with his quick wit and sunbeam smile, laughing handily as he confides in me his…” you know.)

(Dominic Cooper, when we were chatting, you know, like we do, said his sort of hot-shot rise to fame was due to the “unbelievable” success of Mamma Mia!, aaannnnd I felt it necessary to repeat “unbelievable” back to him at least twice, and maybe even up to four times. I think he got my point. Yes, Dom darling, I found it “unbelievable” that even the premise survived a first hazy greenlighting session among the blitzed-out studio executives. Please continue to wear skinny ties and do your hair in this coy fashion because whatever you are doing is more than working for you.)

Also… if anyone has a lead on hanging out with Mira Nair in Africa? Now’s the time to speak up, cause I think we just really would get along. We could talk about yoga, and African politics in the 1920’s, for further topics inquire within.

1a. Someone referenced me in this wikipedia article.

2. It makes me crazy that I can tell from Twitter that Rich Sommer has a Facebook account and that I won’t even bother friending him because he won’t accept it.

3. Went to brunch in Whittier, Dinner in Escondido, and midnight party in North Hollywood.  Stayed much later than I thought I would at each event,

4. I’m really into Paul Schneider and Tunde Adebimpe right now.

Half an hour long, the current fiction editor at the New Yorker discusses a short story from the archives with a current writer who has also been published in the New Yorker.  Against all logic, it’s only pretentious about one in five times. The rest of the time, it’s informative, interesting and points the way to great writers you may have heard about but not had the time to get into.  And the best part?  It’s free.

Go to:  iTunes store, search New Yorker and then download all of them, for free.

Alela Diane

Guitar, sweet vocals, reminds me so strongly of another time and place.

If you have Spotify, then she’s on there.

Click here to go to Hype Machine and hear a selection of her songs.

The Innocence Mission

Back in high-school I used to love this Innocence Mission tape someone made for me, and I played it a great deal and then lost it and forgot about it until I went to Amoeba four years ago and found a bunch of their albums in the dollar bin.  Imagine Rosie Thomas finally married Denison Witmer and Innocence Mission is what happened.  Although I think they came before.  Think Sarah McLachlan and Natalie Merchant, but in a GOOD WAY.

If you have Spotify, then there’s a few albums on there.

Click here to go to Hype M and listen to them.

Salting Ice cream and Watermelon.

Kottke has a good post on this week’s episode of Mad Men wherein a character salts some ice cream before eating it.  Try salting some watermelon as well, it brings out the flavour marvelously.  Thank you, Aunt Barbara.

Andrew said that I looked like Zelda Fitzgerald, and I think it is sort of apt, at least in tone.  Cate got me a lace parasol for Christmas and I shall twirl it merrily come springtime, wearing a poofy white lace dress.  The other day, I literally thought to myself,  “Well, I am going to need kid gloves sooner or later.”  And no, that is always a later, and never a sooner.  I need to either get serious about my latent desires to dress as if I were an extra in a period piece about French regency excess, or I need to give up and start just wearing jeans and Gap T-Shirts.  Oh yes, I am such a student of Platonic moderation. People will say things sometimes like “I wish I had an occasion to dress fancy.” and I find myself wondering if  Every Day is occasion enough, though lately I’ve not dressed accordingly.

The Almanac radio archives are all up and running! I can’t podcast them through iTunes for various legal reasons, but there they are, ripe for listening.

I wrote that part before Christmas, and here it is the last day of the year.  I’ll spare you many of the details, but really, this has been a difficult one, and I am looking forward to changes.

Next year will be better, parasols and all. Maybe I’ll even put a photo in my Christmas cards, ala the woman holding a cup in Monet’s painting, next year!

I left my ID card at home when I went to school tonight. I was planning on heading into the station to upload the audio. The problem is I have to go physically export the audio FROM THE STATION and upload it TO MY BLOG. This process takes 30-40 minutes. I stretched screens for screenprinting for three hours, checked my pockets and found no ID card. I came home to get my ID card, long story short,

Thanks for being patient. It really does feel wonderful that so many of you want to hear the silly stories and songs and interviews that I do. It’s one of the brightest spots in my week, knowing that wherever you all are, you’re listening and we can stay close that way.

I’m sorry I’ve been distant, a lot happened in between now and then that kept me from doing what I should have done, but I will go in to school EARLY tomorrow to make sure Almanac gets uploaded. That puts us at around 12:30 or 1 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. And this week it’s like you get TWO Almanacs!

By the way, have you heard the Ricky Gervais podcast? That is ridiculous and so very funny.

See you then.

I’m watching Fanny and Alexander and it’s tearing my heart up a little bit. Lord almighty. And this is only the second episode! I think there’s like four or five… The weird thing is, and I feel weird even saying this, I think Alexander is really cute, and probably was the best looking boy at any age. He only acted in one other movie after this one, and as near as I can make out with my cryptic understanding of Swedish, he became a lawyer or something akin to that. I wonder what happened there. He is really wonderful in this, and I wonder if that was his decision or his parents to pull him out of acting.

Going to see “I’m Not There” today with Nate. Then tonight I think I will make donuts. Oh, I need to call someone. I’m supposed to be recording but I just don’t know.

Donuts!

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Did you know that

http://www.whatsthescuttlebutt.com

has every single office sound byte ever?  It’s a little amazing.

If you have any interesting stories about misunderstanding, I’d love to hear them.  You could even be on the radio.

Abigail is coming over tonight to record a story or two and I’m also recording Cate and I’s thoughts about the Office, one to run this week and one to run next.  It’s hard building up a treasure trove of material.  I want to have a lot of stuff, but we’ll see.  For this week’s episode, I am interviewing Carsten about Torrey Theatre, Abs is reading a story, Cate and I are doing Office round-up, I’m playing some music and probably running a film review of Zed and Two Noughts as well as a band review of Animal Collective.  Since it’s my first show I’ve stuck to things I know, but hopefully as the weeks go by it will increase in professionalism.

WEDNESDAY 7-8 p.m. Pacific Time

Click below to go to the Biola Radio Site

BIOLARADIO.BIOLA.EDU

And also my first Film.com piece runs today.  I’ll link it when I get around to it.

Also, I added Ryan Schaffner to the ol’ blog roll.  Enjoy that, America.  Sorry I am a lazy person and didn’t add you before, Ryan.

Some thoughts about Vertigo, and by extension, about all of us;

In the 1958 Hitchcock film, Jimmy Stewart as John Ferguson attempts to change a woman into his vision of perfection. The two of them do not really exchange words as much as they argue about who she is becoming. If they do, we are not privy to these interchanges. All we see is his obsession with who she could be, not what she is. She eventually cries “Will you love me then? When I look like her?” and he promises that he will.

I had to wonder; how often do we still do that, still try to make subtle changes about the person that we’re with until they are precisely what we want out of a relationship. It ceases to be about that other person, it is enough that they exist, and that they pertain to us in some small way. We get what we think we want, but I think that it’s a pretty widely acknowledged truth that we lose what we had.

On the other hand, shouldn’t we always want more, for ourselves and for our loves? How do we change together without changing each other or changing everything that made us love them in the first place? I think this is what people talk about when they talk about growth. Two people, growing together. I also think that perhaps people should be wholly themselves before entering a relationship, or at least have a damn good idea of what that might look like. I know it’s impossible to be “wholly yourself”, but it seems that when you are really yourself, you have the chance to be loved for what that is, not what it might be.

I hope that we might always love people for who they are, and encourage each other to become the best versions of ourselves. Not by nagging or cajoling, but by truly knowing one another. Knowing one another so well that becoming a better person, a better friend, a better lover isn’t a possibility, it is an actuality.