Archive for October, 2006
October 31, 2006 at 5:15 am · tag/s : blog, music, travel
i was thinking when i am in the usa and europe i will only go and see musicians i have never heard of before … so there is a thing in the netherlands where you go and watch people play in someone’s house : you book online and then you show up there and pay 10 euros and you get a drink and a snack and somewhere to sit. it’s called live in your living room and in december the following gigs by complete unknowns (to me) are on in utrecht, the city where i was born and lived for the first fourteen years of my so called life :
Aestrid Pondertone Mr Love and the Stallions : 15 12 2006 : Mark Roos : Markstraat 11
Taxi to the Ocean Pien Feith Lushus Excon : 16 12 2006 : Werend & Kitty Grifioen : Admiraal van Gentstraat 13
Harold K : 17 12 2006 : Han Orsel : Hofpoort 2
there was some considerable excitement amongst the population when i last visited my hometown in 1945
utrecht speelt uit : utrecht music website
gun : utrecht music magazine
fc utrecht : utrecht voetbal
October 29, 2006 at 6:14 am · tag/s : blog, doubt
what i like about the day daylight saving starts is that there is some doubt about what the time is, or should be.
you can easily show up for a boring appointment an hour late, even on the monday, and blame daylight saving.
i like to change some of the clocks, but not all of them, and then i really have to think about what the time is and whether it matters, and depending on the sort of day i am having, i can say : well it is really an hour earlier than it actually is, or an hour later.
i think we should put the clocks forward or back every weekend, it will make everyone a lot more relaxed about the time, and more flexible. i’ll see you there at noon, give or take an hour, ok?
October 28, 2006 at 11:16 am · tag/s : blog, doubt, thinking
Given the facts as I know them - and there’s a lot of evidence on both sides - I prefer being uncertain to taking the easy way out and getting rid of my discomfort by being absolutely certain. I don’t know, and no one on this earth can be absolutely certain of the truth here. Anyone who professes to be absolutely certain I really distrust.
p65
Bostwick in Malcolm, Janet. The Journalist and the Murderer. Macmillan, London 1990.
October 23, 2006 at 6:52 am · tag/s : blog, computers, doubt, film, love, pain
someone somewhere once said : everyone has one book in them - maybe we should add “or film” to that…
yes, somewhat belatedly, ephemera has finally caught up with that powerful, haunting document called tarnation
note : i am almost reluctant to call it a film because, although it was shown to great acclaim at cannes and was seen in cinemas and is a more or less conventional film length, it is not a film in any conventional sense of the word - rather it is a complex collage of sound, text and image, which tells the story of the troubled life of jonathan caouette, and was shot and recorded using a variety of cameras and media over 20 years, and edited by him using imovie
so now i finally have an answer to those people that ask : what is multimedia? only i would like to be able to hand them the original three hour cut - the fact that it is 88 minutes long is due to the executive producers, namely gus van sant and that hedwig and the angry inch guy, who persuaded caouette to reduce its length to something more palatable to cinema audiences, which seems a pity (i also wonder which copy writer should be sacked over the tacky tag “your greatest creation is the life you lead…” and all the other gushy stuff on the wellspring media website)
i guess, if pushed, we could call it an an autobiographical documentary, but conventional genres really do this work an injustice - thanks to mobile phone video cameras and web cams there will soon enough be a flood of autobiographical documents, and more than likely they will appear on youtube or my.space and feature product placement - but it is most unlikely that any of them will leave such a strong impression on the retina and the mind as tarnation
it is the harrowing story of one person’s life and growing up and living with insanity and abuse, and the most powerful and confronting scene, for me is at the end : we are in the present, and caouette at the age of 31 turns the camera on himself, and with his schizophrenic, brain damaged mother alseep downstairs, talks about his doubt, and fear, of becoming insane like her…
this is a disturbing multimedia document and a significant achievement - it demonstrates a naive, almost narcissistic, disregard for convention and genre, and why shouldn’t it? i would like to see the original three hour cut… and true to the multimedia form, i imagine myself the executive producer … what kind of film would it be if it was simply a humble documentary about his mother…? which it already is to some extent … and what is next ? tarnation the game…?
assemble your own version of tarnation on your imac - the ten dvd set includes all the original 160 hours of super-8, betamax, vhs, hi-8 and mini-dv, and the still photographs, answering machine messages and audiocassette diaries… and a free copy of ilife06…
(* with thanks to poo-tee-weet? for alerting me to tarnation and lending it to me)
October 18, 2006 at 6:40 am · tag/s : blog, experiments, research, strange
i waste plenty of time in second life (SL) today and it is kind of annoying because i don’t have any time to spare and SL just sucks up time … but i like my character : he is cute … he is big and fat and bald and he gets a free leather sofa, which he likes getting out and sitting on (now that he has learnt how to sit!) - i am reluctant to give more time to it and i am adamant that i am not going to spend any money there - it is bad enough investing time … SL is a complete parallel economy, and a lot seems to depend on how many lindens you have - i was amazed to discover that there are people who make enough money in SL to support them in real life (RL)
i can really understand how you could get totally involved in it - i was looking at houses for sale - there are some beautiful houses and furniture … in a store i was sitting on a nice couch which is scripted so that when your character sits on it, he makes lots of cute gestures of relaxation like folding his hands behind his head and stretching and he appears to be talking to himself - this awakens some feelings of paternalism … and you really feel like buying that couch…
i tore myself away from SL and went to work … where i downloaded the SL software and promptly became a new character (ij yost) to see what the difference would be. i wanted to be a furry, but i wasn’t able to do that so i became a man again - my other character was a woman to begin with and i walked around naked for a while but i drew too much undesirable attention and it is easier to be a big fat man with a big beard and a bald head … i am unable to make ij yost as cute as my other character however, but i set all the values to maximum : fatness broadness etc - unlike in RL it is impossible to make yourself totally and completely ugly and hideously fat
i can imagine that if you owned land and a house in SL, or you can rent a beautiful house with ocean views for say 10 dollars a month, it obliges you to spend time in SL and this could be problematic, even though it is not a game in the conventional sense - there is no quest as such - your aim could simply be to make money, or to make a contribution to the (second) world.
i met up with a friend in SL where she is a journalist and art critic of the SL newspaper. she showed me some stuff, like the new media art centre and she is presenting a paper at a conference in SL on friday.
having just given up cigarettes, i found myself thinking about how i could smoke in SL (you can buy some seriously interesting cigarettes in SL :), and to do other things i would never do in RL, like have tattoos or piercings, and there is plenty of evidence of sexual activity, i saw a bed for sale which enables your character to make lots of sexy noises when it lies on it
the more time (and money) you invest, the more time (and money) second life would demand, and this is dangerous for me, because i am a born procrastinator and i desperately short of time (and money!) - but i am intensely interested in the phenomenon, because there is something about the psychology of human beings and their attraction to simulations that fascinates me
October 15, 2006 at 6:44 pm · tag/s : blog, film
Gollum:
Wake up. Wake up. Wake up, sleepies. We must go, yeeees, we must go at once.
Sam:
Haven’t you had any sleep, Mr. Frodo?
[Frodo shakes his head]
the return of the king
October 13, 2006 at 6:59 am · tag/s : blog, love, people, thinking
one of the most interesting thinkers In Amsterdam is tjebbe van tijen - i spent some time with him in the late seventies and i think i may have been in love with his wife for a day and a half - i wrote about him somewhere in my phd ( … rummage … )
he is having an exhibition and giving a lecture about his work in amsterdam soon - Mediamatic has the guff, and an interview with him by geert lovink from 1994
in amsterdam the archives of whoever ventures into the field of politics and culture will sooner or later end up with Tjebbe van Tijen. For many people he is the embodiment of ’storage mania’. How the movements of the sixties stored their data and the consequences thereof for the current image generation are the central questions of this interview.
Mediamatic
October 10, 2006 at 3:46 pm · tag/s : half arse poems, text, thinking
the walks i remember best are the early
early walks i did
when i first embarked upon
my campaign to get a bit more fit
i was surprised by the strength
in my own legs & i thought : i can walk fast!
—
i.j.oog
wagga wagga*
spring 2006
(* wagga wagga : so half-arsed we had to name it twice)
October 8, 2006 at 6:35 pm · tag/s : blog, doubt
The minute one utters a certainty, the opposite comes to mind.
May Sarton, Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing, 1965
October 6, 2006 at 7:53 pm · tag/s : blog, occasional series, television
Homer: If you don’t start making more sense, we’re going to have to put you in a home.
Grampa: You already put me in a home.
Homer: Then we’ll put you in the crooked home we saw on Sixty Minutes!
Grampa: [meekly] I’ll be good.
Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie
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