Saturday, May 31, 2008

Just Talkin' Nonsense & Auto-Fun :: 5-31-2008

Welcome to "Just Talkin' Nonsense, " a new regular feature from autowin. What can we expect from "Just Talking Nonsense?" Well, you can look forward to the lowest possible interpretations of "form," "content," "art," and "language." Furthermore, you can expect both "deep thoughts" and links to other people's legitimate thoughts. How do we define "Just Talking Nonsense"? JTN = posts both started and completed AFTER midnight. The starting is key -- I usually finish posts post-midnight, but they'll contain writing begun in a more lucid state of mind. The late-night failures aren't substance related, it's just that by that time I've been alone in my room with the door shut for so long that I've become Emily Dickinson, except less good at poetry. (And also it'd seem, less good at grammar) (If I was a Native American, I'd want my name to be Riese LessGood)

Why midnight? 'Cause that's when I turn into a pumpkin. Pumpkins can't write, 'cause they don't have arms, and that's where I come in. The pumpkin speaks, and I am the vessel of his words. The pumpkin has been gutted, it needs me. The pumpkin is always a he. It's not sexist or anything, I don't believe in men or gender at all necessarily, just words. I believe in a whole lot of different ways to be alive. So many ways to be boys and girls and men and women that really, the binary's as old-fashioned as cholera.

Rose & Olive's nerve photo blog is my favorite. I discovered nerve photo blogs while working there. I was interning during Hurricane Katrina and Siege took a break from his usual subjects to photograph New Orleans, his hometown. His family is there, and so on. It was devastating, the photographs are incredible. My brother, who also lives in NO, said: "I'm fine, I'm at my friend's country club in Atlanta drinking beer. Worry about the people who can't leave." Have I mentioned that even though he was born after me, he somehow got older? I must have.

Also during the Autumn of my Internship, Kate & Camilla launched their photo blog. Lo and I went to their launch party in Faraway, Brooklyn. We emerged from the subway and dashed across the wet street and I screamed "Go! Now! Go!" and she said, "This isn't My So-Called Life!" But it was! It was my so-called life. The party was fun, we laughed at everyone. About a year later, I went to a Kate & Camilla gallery opening party with Stephanie, who'd modeled for them. Maybe a year after that, on the subway, I ran into the designers who's clothes Steph had modeled in Kate & Camilla's photographs -- they recognized me and were adorable, snapped me out of the mindset of whatever gross place I was traveling to.

See: life brings itself back around, you just have to stay awake.

Anyhow, Kate & Camilla don't have a photo blog anymore, which brings me back to Rose & Olive. I usually get uncomfortable looking at photos where people aren't wearing all their clothes, but somehow the nudity they employ isn't so much "look at me I'm sexy" as it is, "we were all naked in the womb, what's the big deal." Which also makes me uncomfortable, but life is supposed to be uncomfortable, right? So, they take good photo.

I only look at nerve photoblogs after midnight. Not 'cause I'm killing time but 'cause there's no time to kill. Time is not a pumpkin or a bunny, obviously. Time is a stapler. If time was applying for a temp job, it would list "collating" as a skill.

The photos I've got up here today, all taken from Rose & Olive, look like the houses I imagine sleeping in during that mythical/future part of life between sunrise and the rest of it when Alex and I will be in a car listening to loud heavy sweet popcorn music and the sun'll beat like beating and we'll be driving to California. Except actually some of the houses are more like houses I imagine I'll want to live in, in Eugene or Missoula, when I see how cheap/inexpensive the rent is everywhere but here and say "Pull over." ("If they say in the car that I am insane, I will take over the wheel." - Thomas McGuane, 92 in the Shade) (my "quote" in the senior yearbook) I'll make a CD for the car and name it "California." This'll be the playlist:

California - Joni Mitchell
Hotel California - The Eagles
Southern California Wants to Be Western New York - Dar Williams
California Uber Allies: Dead Kennedys
Goodnight, California: Kathleen Edwards
California Girls: The Beach Boys
Going to California: Led Zepplin
California Sky: Unwritten Law
California: Rogue Wave
California: Rufus Wainwright
Dani California: Red Hot Chili Peppers
California Dreamin': The Mamas and the Papaps
California Stars: Billy Bragg & Wilco
California Love: Tupac
California: Low
California Sun: The Ramones


Quote: "I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was -- I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that's why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon." (Jack Kerouac, On the Road)

Auto-Fun:
1) Thank you, Rebecca Traister, for this: Female Writers, Emily Gould, Sex and the City, The New York Times: Another Pretty Face of a Generation @salon.com: "It's been a nasty couple of weeks for New York's writing women, both real and imaginary." (Also, cheers to the Elizabeth Wurtzel related graphic.) Here's some snippets:
"What provokes such fury, over Carrie Bradshaw, and -- for a flash -- over Gould (barring a book deal and TV show that will turn her meanderings into cultural furniture) is that in a media landscape in which there are a severely limited number of spaces for women's writing voices, the ones that get tapped become necessarily, and deeply inaccurately, emblematic -- of their gender, their generation, their profession. More annoying -- and twisted -- is that those meager spots for women are consistently filled by those willing to expose themselves, visually and emotionally. And not accidentally, by those willing to expose themselves in a way that is comfortable, and often alluring, to many of the men who control the media, and to many of the women who consume it."

"We have to remember: There is nothing wrong with women writing about themselves, their youth, their indiscretions, their habits and values and personal development. Men have been writing about this stuff for thousands of years; they call it the canon."
2) The latest show: "They all feel the constant, mind-numbing urge to remind us of just how crazy and dramatic and hardcore their lush lesbian lives are." Boobs, Elbows and Asses: Lesbians Get Another 'Reality' Check with 'Gimme Sugar' (@nypress):
3) My hero Sam Anderson reviews Robert Olen Butler's The Sex Lives of Others (@nymag)
4) Seriously, I thought this was my secret trick, and if other people start being clever in their cover letters than I'm back to where I started from, which's "no marketable skills." 'Cause clearly it's worked so well for me thus far ... um.: "It's No Act, I Need a Job" (@the nytimes)
5) I just discovered this blog today; she's gay, is trying to start her own indpendent bookstore in Brooklyn and has an incredible link list/blogroll. (@written nerd)
6) Let's talk about SATC forevs and evs!! Patricia Field on Her Favorite 'Sex' Outfits and SJP's Crazy Hat, (@nymag), Sex Writers on "Sex and the City" (@salon.com), and @entertainment weekly; a 100% SATC issue.
7) Do You Hear the People Sing? The Modern American High School Musical (@the simon magazine)
8) "Thanks to Eggers’ own books, McSweeney’s can continue to bankroll what it wants to publish. " Renewing the Faith: McSweeny's Goes Back to Basics, Making Publishing Fun Again. (@laweekly)
9) In Which Women Are Changing the Sex Industry from Inside. (@this recording)
10) Ian McEwan says that "prophets of the apocalypse have become a new and very real danger": The Day of Judgment. (@the guardian uk)
"Her art inspired me to do my best and,
To paint my music like, like I saw it best.
And she says I grew up well. Well, well I grew up strong,
Cause no one's got my back. No one's gonna write me my songs.
I've been tired for days and days."
-Tegan & Sara, "Days and Days"

14 comments:

dani said...

dear pumpkin,

halloween is soon to come. i hope for more JTN, cause i love it...and some hard candy.
sidenote: it's 20:55 here and we're drunk, playing singstar. i just sang scissor sisters "i don't feel like dancing" (but I really feel like dancing) and this reminded me of checking your blog.

xoxo

a. said...

We Got More Bounce(In California) - Soul Kid
California - Rooney


...There are also a ton of Los Angeles tunes.

Anonymous said...

don't forget California by Melissa Etheridge... or my new favorite Hollywood's Not America by Ferras.. or better yet, don't go at all! jk, obvs.

i love your night time crazy thoughts, when i get an email from you after 12 am i know there's for sure going to be fun inside!

Anonymous said...

"Time is not a pumpkin or a bunny, obviously. Time is a stapler. If time was applying for a temp job, it would list "collating" as a skill."

Marry me, Riese.

(Kidding, because a., that was a totally inappropriate thing to say, and b., I don't even know you. (Like in that song "Nineteen".) What I really meant is: those sentences made me want to ell-oh-ell, and also hug you with delight and sincerity, and also get your autograph.)

Um, good links today, too.

Anonymous said...

Your quote made me want to read On the Road again, or really, for the first time since you can barely call what I did in high school "reading."

But I feel like it'll really prepare me well for the western horizon.

Also, good job with the nonsense... even though I'd consider this pretty tame when compared to what you're really capable of.

I look forward to what the future holds for your complete nonsense.

eric mathew said...

Oh I do love the Pat field article. Sometimes I pretend I know her and that she gives me free clothes.

it's just a little day dream of mine...

riese said...

dani: dear dani, thank you. halloween scares me slightly, but also, all holidays and costumes are beautiful. i love the scissor sisters, and that song, and that they brought you here. xoxo/pumpkin.

a.: thanks for the tips! I can't think of any Los Angeles tunes that aren't hip-hop ... clue me in ..

caitlin: don't worry, as we know i'm much better at talking about doing things than doing things. tinkerbell wants to go really bad, but I'm afraid it won't help her w/r/t lookin' a little rexi lately. ok you have to email me those songs. hm, it's 1:45 am as I write this comment, who knows what's about to go down?!!!

e.: yesterday evening, before composing that incredible work of art, I was applying for a temp job and i had to check off my skills. There were catergories like "computer" and "human resources" and then sub-skills ranging from obvious to small to ridiculously ambiguous to absurdly specific like "collating" and "internet" and "Linux" and mentioning "Quicken" but not "Quickbooks," every brand of computer that exists and "word processing" but not asking for Microsoft Office proficiency. It blew my mind, I hit my head with a pumpkin, and here we are with sentences like that one. The key to my success. According to facebook I am already married to Alexandra Vega, and as we all know, facebook is real. But autographs are still quite doable.

a;ex: I'm actually writing a blog that will reference the fact that On the Road is one of the only books I've ever read twice. I read it as a kid but I think didn't get it, really, and read it again when I was 19 and it made a lot more sense then, and filled me with hope and energy and exclamation points. You should read it, your little baby head will explode even moreso than it does every day in reactions to normal life and so forth.

eric mathew: sometimes i pretend that i know the american eagle and that it swoops into my window and gives me free clothes, preferably jeans in size 4-long which are hard to find in stores, it's usually only available on the website. or by eagle.

JD said...

Los Angeles, I'm Yours-The Decembrists. That's all I've got today...oh, and I am already a big fan of JTN-I think it holds a lot of potential for brilliance, hilarity...the usual.

frank said...

from what i gather, photo blogs are just pictures of naked chicks disguised as art, no? who doesn't like that?

and if i didn't know better, i'd've guessed the girl in bed was you.

yes. i'd've.

frank said...

and i'm surprised you don't like the OC theme song -- California -- enough to be on your list.

stef said...

back up joni mitchell, you need me for this one:

go west - liz phair
city of angels - the distillers
cahuenga shuffle - the oohlas
malibu - hole
los angelos - the start (yes, angelos, i know, it kills me inside)
ode to l.a. - the raveonettes (with ronnie spector)
east coast! fuck you! - the bouncing souls


and if you're gonna do a rhcp song it should be under the bridge, no? what kind of 90s adolescent are you?

MoonKiller said...

I think your California mix tape should include:

Ryan Adams - California
Red Hot Chilis - Californiacation
Bob Dylan - California

and

Death Cab for Cutie - Why You'd Want To Live Here

Because it's about LA.

Also.
I love Kathleen Edwards.
I hadn't listened to her for ages until this morning.

dani said...

Dear riese,
I just saw SATC...and there were pumpkins.
Great movie.
Good night.
xoxo

riese said...

jd: Yes, I la-la-la love that song, and I forgot it! it's the one that's always in my head when I'm thinking about giving in to LA

lozo: yes, photo blogs are just pictures of naked chicks disguised as art. I'm glad you know that I'd never just lie around in bed in a thong, clearly I stay dressed at all times. The OC theme song makes me want to bang my head against the wall.

stef: HAWT. Thank you!
I'm a great 90s adolesnce, but under the bridge doesn't have the word "california" in the title!

moonkiller: hot hot hot, thank you! That's the only KE song I have, and actually it was given to me by another blogger. I love it, it makes me sad but in a good way.

dani: dear dani, yes, it was delightful, I enjoyed it. And then wrote a bunch of nonsense about it last night. Good night!