Two Franc Pieces

When I am not writing, I read. Then, when I am not reading, I write.

But that's not the case. Most of the time I, uh, sit?1

Or most of the time I, uh, take to the drink.

Let's leap to those more mundane considerations.2 In America, there is this personal, widely anticipated, yearly holiday called birthday; practically everyone has one, and it occassionally involves the giving of cards, text messages, phone calls and presents. In other countries, I assume, that celebration goes under the guise of Christmas or Saint Patrick's Day, possibly, and salted cods or candied persimmons or gold teeth are the only items exchanged instead. But being American, or a native United States-er, I have never exclusively received fish, fruits or dentures.

Recently and, I will come out and say it, too often, I've received, instead, t-shirts. I was going to call one particular relative to tell him (with due ingratitude), "no more cups" then "no more t-shirts."3 I got the "no more cups" part out, when I spoke with him on the phone, but he responded, "don't worry, no cups, just check your mail for t-shirts." Oh thanks. Never mind the fact that for years and years, while I'll take it as a compliment, he - and his family, I suppose -had sent me t-shirts a size too large.4

No more t-shirts.

Coincidentally enough, one friend, among the friends who returned from the vacation in Asia, got me two t-shirts as souvenirs from Vietnam.5 Cool. He probably paid, like, a buck a piece for them.

So with this big American birthday tradition, though it is, already, for me in the rearview mirror, this year, it ain't too late to bring up to date my gift/wish list.

- I like a hand blender, one of the immersion joints. Soups, shakes, and homemade mayo, yo.6
- I could also use a universal pot lid. I have a couple of 11"+ skillets that invariably I go wishing I had a lid for, in which case, I guess it doesn't happen often enough so that I cannot make do with aluminum foil as an ad hoc solution. Other hand, needing a larger lid happens more often than you think cuz, or at least ubiquitously whenever I pretty much cook for more than 1 person.
- Salad spinner. Water kills salad dressing, so it has been told. It's also practical to have to prevent spoilage and facilitate storage for when/if I buy a big mess of leafy veg.
- Silicone spatula. I have whichever phobia it is that surfaces whenever nonstick cookware and utensils are used.
- I guess Silicone tongs, for that matter. I stir and prod most often with tongs. Or, I pretty much and definitely use tongs for just about everything.
- No Silicone babes, however.7
- Le Creuset pot. It'd be nice to have a heavy, versatile, and highly heat retentive pot, to braise and stew, from stovetop to oven to anything else.8
- A splatter guard. Perhaps more luxury than necessity, because it is not too much fuss to clean and wipe, but why not.
- Seems kitchen intensive? I'd take a decorative piece for one of my wall. My apartment "living room" is a dull large whitewash pane.

There is still a shit load of DVDs that I had hope would hit the market or, if available, attainable. I am gonna go lazy and just crib from earlier lists, with some updating.

- Olivier, Olivier: Agnieszka Holland's flick screened at the MOMA early, early in the year. I saw it. Liked it. It should get the big splashy DVD treatment.
- Cold Water: This is just about one of my most favorite movies ever. For me, it's Olivier Assayas at his finest and with the incomparable jailbait Virginie Ledoyen.9
- Les miserables: The marathon French version, with, and mainly for, Virginie Ledoyen as Cosette. Just slap some subtitles on the sucker for us non-French speakers.
- Inquietude: My initiation to Manoel de Oliveira, who is amazing.
- Doomed Love: I want more Manoel de Oliveira, particularly this which many consider another masterwork.
- Celine and Julie Go Boating. I saw this too. Really, really lovely, as is all the Jacques Rivette flicks.
- Drunken Master 2: The action sequences are so damn out of this world elegant. I believe some big company has shanghaied the DVD rights but cannot recall who.
- My Sassy Girl: The Korean theatrical, and the best, version needs to be packaged as a DVD.
- Mahjong: The hope for a complete Virginie Ledoyen collection continues. But I otherwise really dig Taiwanese New Wave'r Edward Yang.
- A Brighter Summer Day: An important as a director as Edward Yang needs to have more of his shit on the retail shelves.
- Terrorizer: See A Brighter Summer Day comment.
- A Confucian Confusion: I have yet to see this, otherwise, see A Brighter Summer Day comment.10
- Night Zoo: If you did not know, I could not have a higher opinion of Leolo. Night Zoo is Jean-Claude Lauzon's other, as well as debut, movie.
- Make Way for Tomorrow: The inspiration for Ozu's Tokyo Story, and my pal David suggests that it's terrific.
- Rancho Notorious: Fritz Lang is a favorite of mine. I like Westerns. Therefore, I have been dying to see Rancho Notorious somewhere.

Available DVDs in the United States that I would love to see on my DVD pile:

- The Art of Buster Keaton. I absolutely love the Great Stone Face.
- Les vampires by Louis Feuillade.11
- The Decalogue by Krzysztof Kieslowski.
- Marx Brothers Silver Screen Collection: The one that includes Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup.

There are also CDs that I probably want.12 Though, at the moment, there is only one CD that I desperately want:

- You Made Me Realise by My Bloody Valentine: An early EP, but make sure it is the version that includes the song Drive It All Over Me.13

A little old school media charm, I still acquire books:

- Slow Learner by Thomas Pynchon: Only the paperback version.

I would want to load up on more Will Gaddis, or WG Sebald, except upon reflection, it's been a bit while since I got into a fiction book written by a chick. Maybe old guard George Eliot, Ruth Rendell, or George Sand?

Are there good contemporary chick writers? Margaret Attwood? Kelley Link on my Amazon wishlist, no Zadie Smith, maybe Scarlett Thomas, Jeanette Winterson, is she still hip? Annie Proulx?14

My cousin likes to tell what she've seen that is so good or so amazing or so etc. Books (in which case, it'd be read, not seen) or DVDs. She likes Cassavates, There Will Be Blood, Herzog and stuff like that. She dissed La Notte. I basically said, the only shit you like is where folks overact or act crazy. She defends by saying she likes slow stuff too, Tsai Ming Liang for example. I counter, plus shit that is overran by sexual deviancy. She's been trying to convince me to read a couple of erotic Jap writers.

Showboat acting, by the way, is not a signifier of inferior quality. I bring it up more to identify her preference. It is also true that it is something that I am definitely not drawn to too. I don't really care how great Daniel Day Lewis is if the whole point of, let's say, There Will Be Blood is to watch him jerk off, acting wise. At the same time, acting is likely one of the strong suit of the American movie industry. Unfortunately, with the blind ascendancy of the star system, the Hollywood movie basically is purely a vehicle for and dominated by the movie star. I am not sure when exactly this shift happened, I think of someone like Paul Newman, certainly a tremendous star, but he is so generous in his flicks that even in a somewhat straightforward vehicle like Cool Hand Luke, the rest of the cast share in the heft and glory. I am not a cinema historian, but by the time we arrive at Tom Cruise, Will Smith, or Tom Hanks, the entirety of any movie picture is to be utterly secondary or subservient to the movie star. Not that my cousin would, heaven forbid, entertain anything by the more traditional or mainstream lead actors.15

Oh dear, one birthday too many, I guess I am not talking exactly on point because there is a big superficial difference in a Daniel Day Lewis movie and a Tom Cruise movie. Actually, I think my point is there is not that big of a difference, it is a systemic thing where the bent of the American movie industry, big studio or the indies, are all star geared, There Will Be Blood exemplifies with its forceful hollowness. A picture gets green-lit because a star signs onboard, and so the script or the director tailors pretty much the whole raison d'etre for the star. And that is part of why so much stuff coming out of the United States has over the top acting. And therefore is just not my bag.

I should say that I also like a view of the steamer sex side too. Go read Henry Miller'sTropic of Cancer, it is grandly stupid/ridiculous.

At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris' chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces...

Moreover I pretty much got my movie legs from the twin bootleg videotape bill of Clockwork Orange and Betty Blue. Boy, did we think that Gabriel Yared's Betty Blue soundtrack was the shit back in the day.16 And Leolo, gloriously, with a panning away shot, has a juvenile delinquent fucking a pussy cat.

I just don't have the enthusiasm to dig fully that marginalia/fringe of Marquis de Sade, Anais Nin, etc. I don't rejoice in the naughtiness, depravity, or the transgression, or the whatever.

Since first reading Sebald - what has turned out to be - many years ago, I, uh, haven't read anything else by him, but would love to. He has an interesting experimental bent but in a different sense. Whereas, say Gaddis, Markson or other writers that I like, plow through linguistic, Sebald tills in the Proust tradition, uprooting memory or perhaps subconsciousness, which as theme or subject goes, gets me weak at the, let's say, intellectual knees.17 And in case I have not said it enough, j'adore Marcel Proust.18

Perhaps not widely advertise, and most mundane, is that I'm a huge Yankee fan. With that:

- a Yankees autographed item;
- a Yankees jersey or a Yankees cap;
- a Yankee World Series championship; a Yankees victory; or, last resort,
- a chance to watch a/the game on television.19 I am coaxial free, Time Warner less, no YES.20

You know what is not super delicious? Usually, whenever I prepare a meal, as I go through the mise en place, the last thing I do is the garlic, because well, since it's typically among the first or second thing that goes in, I prep it close to last to spare washing another bowl to hold it. And then through the normal course of cooking I am busy timing what goes in next and what follows what, and maybe washing the larger prep items, that the knife and cutting board is not washed right away. Then serving and eating and that stuff. But, let's say, I want a piece of fruit to end, I absentmindedly and inevitably go to the same knife and cutting board to cut up, most recently like, my apple. And then of course, garlic apple. Less delicious than even that sounds.

- Maybe a garlic press? Though I really frown upon shortcut clutter devices like that, but why not.21
- Well, as I am just wetdreaming, a new pair of kicks would be nice, specifically New Balance 1110.



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1. Here you go, a paraphrase from / reference to one of my most favorite book, Markson's Wittgenstein's Mistress. And, for whatever reason, partly because it is short, it is accessible to quoting and paraphrasing for many situations. And I love it, where the supposed mystery or exoticism of the creative process or life is debunked by more mundane considerations.
2. To be honest, and prosaic, attracting notice or visitors to this/my site is not, for me, trivial. Then again, that consideration is violently strained in relation to what is actually written and, uh, the frequency of said writing. This, sadly, reinforces that strain.
3. Tongue cheek no more cups because once I was given a couple (or few) novelty cups that in all honesty got consigned to pen holders, dust collection, and whatnot pretty much instantaneously. I have a wee apartment, a micro studio I'd say, and if I already have anything there already, like cups or mugs, it is pretty much all the space that can be afforded to those items, or that necessity permits. I ain't got room for another bunch of cups. And I only have that many pens, ya know. Dust, however, is another matter.
4. I since had enough and emailed his oldest daughter, "For the future, I wear medium." That's not a hint, by the way.
5. I like to visit Vietnam one of these days. Insightful! Except who wouldn't.
6. Since I have been experimenting in the kitchen with greater regularity, I feel I am gambling at the various food poisons roulette table: bacteria, worms, parasites, oh my, Salmonella, E coli, toxoplasmosis, trichinosis, and so forth. Lots of chicken, runny eggs, runny cheap eggs, some pork, everything done to the just medium rare demarcation. Though, perhaps, the use of the various bad fats are a greater, more severe and long reaching concern, bacon fat, butter, duck fat, etc. Otherwise, you know what's the key ingredient for mayo? raw egg yolks.
7. That might be too judgmental.
8. Or is that super bougie? I just like a lil something versatile enough to stick in the oven if need be. One of the ghetto ripoff options will do, I suppose.
9. I am much less enthused about Assayas these days but I suppose I wouldn't mind catching Summer Hours. He is still good, but not quite the groundbreaker I first thought.
10. Since I first threw up this list, Edward Yang passed away. The local theater is showing 24 City, by Jia Zhangke. That, I really want to catch that. In case I have not mentioned it in quite this way, Jia is pretty much an everest on my favorite movie directors range. He has a brilliant formalism in his flicks. At the same time, he, through several movies running, documents China, shifting urban life, shifty capitalism, the twenty first century like a motherfuck. A lazy habit, but I frequently name check Godard when I bring up Jia, for many reasons, but one is that they both really are in touch with what is here and right now (or Godard in the 60s) while also amplifying it to a universal context. Yang also engaged in this type of zeitgist critique/mirror as Taipei and modernity collided.
11. Not that Rivette owes anything to Assayas for their shared filching from Feiullade and Les vampires. Rivette has overtly been doing so for decades, and perhaps I should state outright that I have not seen Les vampires except for some excerpts and of course the iconic Muisidora images. Irma Vep probably is the Olivier Assayas movie, at least what stakes his reputation, and squeeky latex'ed Maggie Cheung is probably, up to now, I'll be optimistic, his most lasting impressionable image, and it might have prompted Rivette to put in that awesome up through the skylight sequence in Va savoir, and I really love - though some of my friends are less enamored by - Jeanne Balibar, in which case, purely as a homage the Va savoir scene was nicer, by perhaps being more playful about it. Of course, Irma Vep bluntly and actively is tilling Les vampires.
12. Even more mundane, I really wish for or need to win over a pal or pals who are earnest music fans. There is just too much music that I want to check out that I know already will not hold much interest for me beyond a song or two or be so so overall. Like right now, including some others I have mentioned in passing, I do not want to buy the Boy in Static cd or the Land of Talk cd, but I do want to give it a good listen to. And really, I buy a lot of other stuff and can hold my own when it comes to reciprocating. Otherwise, see update at footnote 17?
13. My upstair neighbor, by the way, when I open my iTunes app and check his shared library, has Drive It All Over Me. I do not know how to broach a request to burn me that tune.
14. Not that I am particularly a slave to award winners, I looked over the the National Book Award finalists for the past couple of years, and boy, there are a decent amount of chicks representing. Eesh, now I have to look through them to see who actually might be worth my credit money. Marilynne Robinson, Julia Glass, Shirley Hazzard, Lily Tuck, Jennifer Egan, Francine Prose?
15. Oops, that heaven forbid was uncalled for. I am the same way, a summer movie by the top Hollywood money makers turn me off too. At the same time, which actor starring in a role plays a very minimal part in which movie I catch.
16. I leave Betty Blue as it is, because, well, it's kind of a so so movie but is saved by being personally essential, fun, a remarkable intro to gap tooth pinup Beatrice Dalle, and an exemplar of quality soft core french movie. Ha! Complete coincidence, Betty Blue got renewed distribution, a director's cut no less, oh my.
17. If I appear to accuse my cuz of a type or types, I certainly have a type, as well. Mostly it's an enhanced or elevated formalism. For movies, who directs the joint contributes by far the biggest factor for my viewing decision. At the same time, but mainly because it's the aspect that I can most easily fawn over, the acting bits are usually what I comment most on. Zhao Tao, I since caught 24 City by the way, continues to be fucking awesomeness. My biggest beef also continues to be the insufficient or nonexistent praise for Zhao's tour de force performances.

  Supposedly, this past May, the New Yorker magazine ran a mountainous feature on Jia Zhangke. I am no subscriber, so if anyone is, please forward me a copy or scan of the article. Thanks. I should throw that up on my list. And finally, if you do click thru to the various Jia Zhangke trailers, his choice of music in said trailers and throughout his movies is phenomenal, ain't it? UPDATE: Googling a bit, and this is interesting, as it this piece. In which case, I definitely want some CDs by Taiwanese Lim Giong, for example. Pretty kickass.

18. Proust, I am unsure the relevance of, was a reader of George Elliot and George Sand.
19. The thing is, it is common knowledge among pals that I am a huge Yankee fan, and also no secret I am cable less, also; everyone I know has cable and therefore have access to Yankee games. Invite me, biz-atches.
20. Yankees Entertainment and Sports.
21. Small living square footage, limited utility (though I do use a lot of garlic), not minimal price tag, more cleaning, etc.

  Completely unrelated, I should add that I don't understand this hyper crackdown on trailers on youtube/internet. Granted, a lot of the trailers I hope to get were older movies, back before the creation of the www. But it is flat absurd how much vital material is being brought down.