Get down girl, go ahead get down
Missy | November 29, 2005
Hi, where have I been? I don’t know, man, I don’t know. Around.
An incomplete update: I’m back in the movie-watching saddle (also the music-listening saddle, but I never really stopped riding that horse), now that I’m realizing the end of the year is nigh and there are lists to make and whatnot. Though I’m not feeling particularly wordy, or rather, bloggy about anything I’ve seen lately, I’m at least now caught up on Capote (an absorbing lead performance, along with the face of actor Clifton Collins, Jr (Perry Smith) that could melt hearts, but uneven overall…and I wonder how it fares for those who haven’t read In Cold Blood?); A History of Violence (pretty good but I’m not yet certain if great..and I suspect I deliberately viewed it as something broader than a pointed read on current affairs, though I don’t think that has anything to do with my opinion on the film’s quality…perhaps I found much of it to be too obvious even if some moments–the scene on the stairs and a hug of disbelief between son and father who has guts splattered all over him–stuck in a hazy, unsettling way); and Ballets Russes (a delightful film full of personality as well as history…and, luckily for lazy me, a continued holdover at Film Forum).
I should also mention that I finally caved and bought the Kanye West album, only after an embarrassingly un-hip moment in dance class when I had to ask who was responsible for “Gold Digger” (what. I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t have cable televison), the theme for the most recent combination that’s drawn spectators to the studio door (or, likely, just people waiting for the next class). If it sounds like it’s a hip-hop class, it’s not; we’ve danced to the sounds of Yo La Tengo, Spoon, Bloc Party, and David Byrne/Brian Eno in the past, even if the choreography is deliberately un-pretty, as in, un-flowy. Not that there’s anything wrong with hip-hop.
Have you ever played a game called “Salad Bowl”? It’s a make-shift version of celebrity Taboo but without all the you can’t do/say that restrictions, which means my clue of “Teen Queen. Annoying. Not Lindsay Lohan…(silence)…Rhymes with ‘Pilary Muff’” (although I’m pretty sure I wasn’t quick enough with the wit and instead said “Puff”) was totally legal. Our friend Anna taught it to us at Thanksgiving Dinner, Part II (which was an actual second Thanksgiving dinner, not one of leftovers but one made deliciously anew and one which I was just able to taxi to straight from LaGuardia on Friday night). Playing with some of architect Gerry’s entries into the bowl, I was worried I’d have to reach into my bag of “Rhymes with ‘Please hand her snow’” descriptors, but he surprised us all by throwing in porn names and Burger King. (Gerry: “What. He’s the King of Burgers.”) Also, playing against a team with a married couple: not fair. We got killed.
So I’m thinking that if I can cough up the cash flow, I’m finally going to break down and buy a new flat-panel television as well as some new, smaller speakers. I don’t need anything fancy for the sound system, since I mostly tend toward quiet foreign films (for example, I still haven’t quite forgiven myself for missing a rare screening of Cassavetes’ Love Streams at BAM, even with good reason) rather than shoot-em-up fireballs (plus, I don’t want my neighbors to hate me like I did my former neighbor with whom my bed and therefore my sleepy head shared a wall). But I still need something to adequately power my cache of hip-hop and classical music.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me; writing this post took a lot of effort. Ugh.
UPDATE: I *knew* I was forgetting something. That something is a link to the new Smithsonian American Art Museum blog, written by DC man about town Kriston Capps. Well done, son.
