There was a time in my life when I used to force myself to wake up at 6am every weekday, gladly, deliberately. Even though I didn't need to. It was so I could run downstairs, sit on a heater vent, and watch Speed Racer and Star Blazers and Robotech. At the age of 6 I really didn't know that these were imported from Japan or that they'd been recut or whatever. Something about their aesthetic just instantly worked for me, and I'd set an alarm accordingly.

There was something deeper going on, though. These were the first stories I encountered as a child with a serial continuous story where characters died (sometimes brutally - every kid I know who saw Robotech as a child cannot forget when Roy Fokker the hotshot badass of the show died mercilessly and randomly), or met personal tragedy, or had complicated family relations. I remember a single episode of Star Blazers where each crew member has one last chance to say goodbye to a loved one before they go out of range on their spaceship. The whole episode was devoted to this, no space battles. The hero of the show didn't have family left so there was no one to call. For the first time a piece of fiction resonated with me, even though it was just a cartoon. I think it's why I have never considered animation a lesser medium. I liked this stuff a lot more than Star Wars simply because it didn't seem so black and white. It felt like a hint that the world was, as I intuited, a little more complicated than adults made it sound.

Anyway, so the Wachowski brothers are making a Speed Racer movie, admittedly family friendly of all things, and it sounds like they've got it so right. They're even having a real monkey play chim chim. This is the Mach 5 and it's picture perfect...



Read the story about it here.

Oh insomnia. As a condition I regard it not so much medical as metaphysical. As summer has arrived I find every day I can't sleep progressively by each hour. Close friends who have known me for long call me a vampire or joke about my permanent jet lag. If I do get to sleep these days, some strange thing will happen to relieve me of sleep.

Like this morning, first a stray delivery person arrived with breakfast for someone else (and I'm sure the smell of bacon woke me up even more). Then I go back to sleep. Have dreams about New York under attack; for the second time in a week. The next thing I know I'm awake again and I hear as I come out of this dream fighter jets flying perilously low. I'm awake and this is real and I'm completely rattled, running to the backyard to look at the sky. But I forget, obliviously, that it's Memorial Day and it's just an airshow. The spell of sleep is broken for the second time and I'm wide awake now. Grumpily, with that physical feeling they always use to describe Gollum: "feeling stretched out and thin". I'm meaning to send someone a simple txt message upon their landing at an airport in another city. Last year I was absent from home four months of the year, flying alone a lot of course. Since pretty much everyone now turns their phone on as soon as they land I think it's always nice to have someone far away say hello when you do. Next thing I know I wake up a few hours later, phone in hand, having typed into it "bur i'm so sleeply" and totally missed that opportunity. And I have a headache. My other friend calls me who's supposed to see a movie with me. He's waking up too late as well. Best laid plans lie in bed longer.

Later this evening I watch a documentary about insomnia and have to shut it off. It's like swimming in a mirror, watching the condition reflected with experimental filmmaking techniques. The tossing and turning, the inability to turn off the mind at night, the constant need for some kind of information or research that propels me on tangents. The attempts at remedies.

But for all this, there's something I strangely value in my insomnia. Valuable memories from moments when the rest of the world was mostly asleep, the bright deep blue that washes over everything in those amazing hours before and after the sun comes round. Passing fellow insomniacs or night shift workers in the night, the strange sort of mood and rhythm, the confessional whispery speech. I've seen violent things, beautiful things, entire cities waking up. I've stumbled with friends laughing in the middle of the night glad I live in a place that supports our bad habits. Nocturnal life is a state of mind, especially if you spend it mostly alone. It's like getting to see the universe from a space capsule.

But if you make contact with fellow travellers there's some strange bond I can't explain. Everyone I know who's a night owl knows this, and we have an odd camraderie.



One of the films that most made an impact on me upon arriving in Europe was Leos Carax's Les Amants Du Pont Neuf, called The Lovers on the Bridge here and sporting some gaudy horrendous Miramax cover art that makes it look like a mannered French romance. It's anything but. And it's full of moments that are all about the beauty of being nocturnal. Carax's film before this, Mauvais Sang has almost half of the film devoted to a boy and a girl forced into proximity keeping each other company through the night, and somehow conjures up bliss from just that. This one has some of the same mood but there's something harsh playing against the beauty, like a sensation that you want to fall madly in love but you know it's going to be dangerous. It's an odd film in that it's full of personal hints but you know it isn't really personal at the same time; it's a movie in love with being awake in a city at night but the main character is conflicted by his inability to sleep.

Beyond that it's an exceptional, unique movie. I prefer Amelie as a Parisian romance, but this movie is indescribably good. And there are so many moments that just strike you as something you've never seen before or since.

I watched it this week with someone who did get it, a fellow nocturnal person. And I hadn't seen it in years and I realized this is something that more people should see if they're attuned that way.

Here's a trailer for Mauvais Sang (called The Night is Young here). Now I want to watch this again.



The Surrealists and the Dadists, I read, used sleep deprivation to make themselves that slight bit of hallucinatory. I don't do it on purpose, but I understand the sensation. There is something, for all the affliction, wonderful about it which feels like a guilty secret. Right now it keeps me company while I whittle away hours writing.

Rest in Peace, Charles Nelson Reilly.

If you remember him, it's probably as a fixture of game shows and what have you. But I'll never forget his portrayal of Jose Chung... These are the best ten minutes I've ever seen in a television show.

Sunday newspaper reading (another good source of inspiration): J.G. Ballard writing on Salvador Dali. I disagree fundamentally with some assertions here, and it's rather slight for a Ballard piece... There's too much groundbreaking work from the Surrealists and Max Ernst to single out just Dali. Their work suffuses every visual medium known to us; often times while watching ads aimed at kids' food products I'm amazed by how surreal the food itself has become, getting up and talking to the kids or primary colored tacos and what have you. I've also got, for all his absurdity, some issues with Dali's support for Franco. But I've also never gotten over my first glimpse of Un Chien Andalou. I think when you look at work like this you really have to put yourself in the frame of mind of people in 1929, where it must've seemed like a caterwauling psychic wail. Here's an interesting interview with Ballard here about his most recent book. The most shocking thing I read there is that something happened in England called The Ikea Riots. Which my head is still spinning over. Ballard seemed to define in his work in the 60s a strange sort of science fiction that predicted our future behavior - ecological disaster, urbanization, psychotic behavior in suburbia, and such things as absurd as Ikea riots. Don DeLillo said the future belongs to crowds. I believe it belongs to people lining up weeks in advance for Xmas sales and new videogame consoles and the release of blockbuster movies. Overconsumption has no better, uglier visual icon.



And here's some Pixies doing Debaser, the song that made me aware that this film even existed.

Here are some things my friends have been up to. Lately I've had some talks with friends about sources of inspiration. For me, friends creating good works are inspiring. There's a dialogue that can transcend forms; seeing something good by someone else makes me want to share something with them.

Nick Harmer is the friend I've had longest for life, we've known each other since we were 12 years old. Most of you know him as the bass player in Death Cab for Cutie. He was going to blog here with me; and in the archives there's still like two posts by him. Anyway he's started his own which features an amazing news story on emo culture that has us culpable for teen suicide (no really), as well short fiction, which he hopes to have more of. He just posted his first short story there. Check out his blog colony collapse here.

Illustrator Josh Cochran has redone his website right here. There's always something amazing to look at there. This is only about some of Josh's work, but his pieces featuring war zone imagery I especially take note of; in an age when a lot of artists I know are frustrated with political process and how to put in their work Josh somehow captures the feeling of the times. Here's one I just happen to like, though.



Another Dan-Ah Kim illustration I didn't see at first from Dan-Ah's Etsy store where there are some very affordable giclee prints. I respond to this one so much because it reminds me of my recent little adventure. I'm totally biased to what she does because she makes art that looks like the way things feel inside my head, once they get translated into memory or daydream.



Cat Kim did this as more of a doodle than anything but I like it so much here it is. Here's a link to her site but all that's up now is what happened when I asked a girl to the prom.



And lastly, this is from an email from a friend in Japan. I've had a shift lately that has been good for me as far as inspiration goes, as well. I declared myself an atheist at the age of five. I know that sounds ludicrous but my parents remember it well - between their Christianity and Bhuddism they kind of left their kids to make up their own minds. Lately I've had some sort of internal reckoning that didn't happen all at once but gradually. I got bored and angry with the declarations and praise heaped upon people like Dawkins and Harris - atheism as a religion. Martin mentioned Fortean Times in his blog. Arrogance and ignorance are always two heady combinations. I've come to find that the world is mysterious and uncanny. Every single person has some sort of unexplained event or memory of a stray perception into something unknowable. Maybe not knowing how the universe works exactly is something beautiful in itself. I've derived inspiration from that. Most importantly, respect and listening to others' beliefs has tuned me into something, some frequency that was missing.

My friend in Japan writes beautiful emails to me from time to time. And here's what she wrote recently when I asked her to tell me some ghost stories. English is not an easy language for her but I think she writes beautifully, and even better than I just did:


When I was 21, I used to live in Seto, a city near Nagoya.
My apartment was located at the crossroad.
There were traffic accident frequently, so I kind of got used to it.
One night I heard the crash and thought that someone got hit by a car.
But it was really late and I was so tired. I went back to sleep.
Then, the next moment I realized, I could feel that someone was standing right next to me.
I was so scared that I tried to keep my eyes shut.
Even though I kept my eyes shut, I could somehow see this woman.
She started walking around and told me that she could've been saved if I called for help.
She was blaming me for not calling.
I tried to say something, but I couldn't talk and I couldn't move.
I chant buddhism mantra in my head because that's what we are supposed to do when we encounter ghost in Japanese fairy tails.
I think I fell asleep eventually, and when I woke up in the morning, I found all my window in my room was wide open.
I was really cautious and I even drew the curttain with clothespin to make sure that it's shut completely before I go to bed.
So it's impossible that the window was open. But I found all the clothespins on the floor and the curtain and the window was open.
Anyway, there wasn't any accident that night, so I didn't have to feel guilty about not calling.
But I used to see her afterwards time to time. I really wanted to move there because it was a bit creepy, but I couldn't.
I didn't have enough money.
My friends told me that I might be drunk and I had nightmare and didn't remember that I opened the window and etc.
But I wasn't drinking that night and it seemed so real.
Well, that's my ghost story when I was 21.

I used to see an old man standing in the tiny space between the fence of parking lot and the buidling next to it.
It's impossible for a guy to stand such tiny space(it's a space that I can hardly put my hand in it), but here he was standing it.
The moment I realize that he's there, he disappears.
But I never felt scared or creepy at all.
I told my mom about him. She told me that he sounds like a guy who had cafe near the place..
I also told my friend and she told me that he must be the cafe guy. She told me that I could see a photo of him at city's history museum as his family donated his old movie posters and record collections when he died.
So I went to the museum and it was the guy that I always saw.
It was quite nice as he seems to love movies and music, too.

I don't consider myself as religious, but I can say that I'm pretty superstitious.
I believe that there will be some unknown power or will that somehow makes this world what it is.
Religion is sort of the tool that opens the door for this unknown thing.
So it doesn't make any sense to me to fight over which religion is right as after all, it's the same thing.

So here are some suggestions for inspiration: listen to beliefs that aren't your own, ask someone to tell you their first memory or the strangest most unusual thing that's ever happened to them, watch some good fight scenes, eat amazing food and drink coffee or tea, see what your friends are working on, write overly long emails and ask for the same, listen to music you don't normally listen to, try doing something in a style you never have before, and share your work, the things you love. If they don't work at least you'll have fun.

Found these while doing some research for something. First of all is this gold medal match from the Olympics 2004 in Tae Kwon Do featuring Dae-Sung Moon. It takes a bit of time but about halfway through there's a single moment that's just phenomenal - you'll know it when you see it because it ends the match. The amount of power behind such a move is pretty staggering. Stupid commentary - calls the Korean contestant Chinese and says he's large for a man from his country.



And then there's this from a Tony Jaa movie. It's a little stagey, sure, but looking past all that it's a brilliant and close to unreal piece of filmmaking, especially steadicam work.



People argue about martial arts on the Internet like nothing else...

I have good news about food and bad news. First the good: Korean fried chicken, which I am perhaps biased about to begin with, is insanely good. Last night I went to Bon Chon Chicken in Ktown (at 314 Fifth Avenue, 2nd Floor between 31st and 32nd). While arguments rage about who has the better version of tongdalk chicken all I know is that what I ate last night was damn good.



Light, crispy, beautiful taste, the pickled radish great to go with it. But I have to admit, our crew of Koreans were in pain from the spicy version. Be careful, that stuff isn't fooling around. Unlike regular fried chicken I didn't feel overgreased and queasy afterwards. I just wanted more. And there is no better food to drink beer with. Bon Chon is a little unusual, it has that overkill modern asian aesthetic of welded metal and far too loud dj music... A nightclub that serves fried chicken if you will. But it's so tasty.

Ktown is a chunk of Manhattan around the Empire State Building, centered on West 32nd street between 5th and 6th ave. We went to karaoke afterwards and Dan the other GR blogger dropped by. This was Dan's first trip out to the modern Ktown and he remarked on how happening it was. It does tend to be one of the most crowded parts of the city on weekends, and one thing that's distinct about it is how much exists on floors above and below. That's no problem for us Asian people but very unusual in New York to put nightlife above up and off the street. Whether or not there's PC bangs or DVD bangs, I don't know. The past few years I've always dropped by ktown just a little bit, or had a meal there and split. Last night was a lot of fun to get lost in it, even if we did get blind drunk on soju.

My dad of all people just told me an interesting fact about soju: if you drink it cold, it doesn't metabolize until it reaches the temperature of your body in your system and that's when it has an effect on you. So that explains why all of a sudden we got wasted out of nowhere...

_

Ok the bad news, this article recounts the discovery of a stranded boat in southeast asian waters which was full of 5000 animals, almost all endangered species. It made me sick to my stomach. I don't care what cultural rationales are behind the consumption of these animals. There are things about our culture that we need to abandon when they're damaging. Claudine and I had a short exchange on her blog but I am really moving towards considering that the real problem with our environmental crisis is totally perceptual and attitudinal. The trade in endangered species for medicine and food consumption is most disgusting because as the animals become more and more rare the market conditions lead to even more exclusivity and profit for the traders. When the simple fact remains if they would lay off for awhile these species might recover.

Is there any sense at all to the fact that in China a plate of Napoleon Wrasse lips goes for hundreds of dollars? The lips of a fish?

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I know I've been fairly absent the past few days, more later.

Tonight I saw John Carney's Once, one of my favorite movies this year and one of the best reviewed.

You know when you're falling for someone and that speechlessness they can cause at moments where you don't even know how to find original, eloquent, honest words enough to tell them how you feel? The film is about moments like that; and made me feel the same way. I don't know how to write about it. It's such a modest, delicate, subtle, messy thing. It's scruffy and cheap, and maybe all the more beautiful for it. And strangely, it's a musical of sorts.



Having lived in Ireland for four years of college it is about the only film I can think of to share that exactly communicates the texture of the place when I lived there; in some ways I worry that some of the Ireland in the film is probably leaving, if not gone.

Where it's going to lose some people is the fact that it's a musical. No one breaks into spontaneous song and dance but there is wall to wall musical performance throughout but always within the context of the story (with one sublime moment that reminds what musicals used to be like). If you feel superior to Glen Hansard's songs you're not going to get this. But it's so wonderfully stripped of the contrivance and manipulation of other romantic films. At one point a character says "I used to have a romantic streak. When I was your age." And that's maybe the entire tone of the film. Someone deeply romantic who's trying not to be but just can't help it. It's so beautifully free of contrivance and manipulation. It comes to you with the bewilderment of falling for someone when you don't expect it. It seems simple but even now at 4am I just realized the importance and weight of a single line that at the moment didn't register.

Things I carried away so happily from this thing: seeing people in a movie looking desperately for batteries so they can listen to music in the middle of the night - the kind of prosaic thing that actually happens but becomes luminous here. The humor derived from environment and the kinds of random things you'd witness yourself on the street and file away as funny. The absolutely pitch perfect sensation of recording music in a studio, working till dawn and what comes after - the traditional leave the recording studio to hear the music on shitty car speakers (in my years of shooting documentary of musicians these were always some of my favorite moments). One of the most spot on portrayals I've ever seen of what alchemical bond forms between two artists who are doing more than collaborating; they become complements to each other. Just the pure complete honesty of this film. Tonally different, but the last movie I saw that felt this true was Half Nelson.

And without a doubt: this is a perfect date movie. The kind of thing you'll walk out of grateful someone is there with you having shared the same thing. Everything lately is like a song to me; this is one of those ones you hear and want to share the headphones over, and when you listen to that song someday you know it'll remind you of who was there. About the only good advice I could ever give here is to bring your crush to this.

This is a very short story by Haruki Murakami that I read and reread like four times last night after someone shared it with me. It's like a favorite song, or at least as close I've ever felt a short story doing the same thing a song can. It's like a 100% perfect story. Read it here.

A trailer for the first adapatation of Phillip Pullman's unsurpassed and brilliant His Dark Materials books. I have great fondness for About A Boy so I wasn't as bothered as some by the choice of director Chris Weitz. I daresay as a visualization and cast they've got it fantastically right, especially Eva Green as the witch Seraffina Pekalla. These are some of my favorite books so any film of them is an adjunct to the text and superfluous in my opinion. Just glad it's looking right.

Trailer here.

Interesting pieces on a film that's just shown at Cannes, Chacun son Cinema which translates to To Each Their Own Cinema. Like Paris, Je'Taime it's an anthology of short films by a group of amazing directors, in some ways much more impressively. Too many to list, but Takeshi Kitano, Wong Kar-Wai, and Tsai Ming Ling are there (no one from Korea). Each filmmaker was asked to make a film about the state of cinema.

This led to a press conference in which Atom Egoyan and Roman Polanski ended up debating the state of things and Polanski walking out. The difference with this and other anthology films is that this one is getting excellent reviews and is part of a much larger essential debate. What exactly is the place of cinema now? There have been protestations of the death of cinema since the postwar period here and there (I think Wim Wenders, one of the directors here, did a series of interviews in the early 80s with filmmakers on the fact that cinema was dying, which is funny to read in hindsight), and no technology has yet to completely diminish its collective cultural power. But it is different now, and that's discernible and obvious. The current generation of youth have a different relationship to the medium than we do.

Reading old reviews of Jodorowsky's El Topo reminds me that there was a time when a cult movie had a much larger power, akin to that of an art exhibition. It could only be seen collectively and with much effort and in certain cities late at night and could not be rewound, paused, commentated upon. I don't think cinema is dying whatsoever, but it is losing some of its sacred power undoubtedly, but its inevitable. We live in an age of commentary and disruption of illusion; magickal processes are meant to be transparent now. Some things are better with a bit of mystery. I do believe the sanctity of the movie theater is lost forever. But the 30 second television commercial is probably going to die inevitably, and maybe even to some degree the music video for business reasons. But movies are perhaps by their accordance with vision and sound and their flickery alpha state inducing nature the closest thing we have to representing the shared state of our dreams, so they'll always be around.

If I had to make a 3 minute film about the state of cinema it'd revolve around something I can't forget from last summer... While leaving the tiny island of Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico, the local airstrip had a series of posters on your way out that were about what hopes the people had for the future of the island, as expressed by children in school. One said "I hope someday Vieques has a cinema". As a child in isolated and strange suburbia between Seattle and the Cascade Mountains movies were a door into a wider world I hungered for and couldn't get close to. I would watch anything that was foreign just so i could see more of the world. There will always be people with that hunger.

Here's another trailer for Wong Kar-Wai's My Blueberry Nights that makes it look like a different movie. Unusual trailers, too, in that they don't show off which actors are involved and here in the US this thing is going to be sold heavily on its cast alone.



Here's yesterday's for those who didn't want to go find it.



As Richard pointed out in comments yesterday, reaction has been very mixed at Cannes, tilting toward the negative.

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This is a great new music video by Dominic Leung. He was part of the incredible Hammer & Tongs group who made some of the best videos of the late 90s. Lots of griping amongst those in music video world these days about budgets. Well, this is how you do it. And yeah it might be slow for you at first but to me the payoff is worth it. I like videos best when regardless of all else they make you feel something.



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I'm having a hell of a time dealing with health insurance in the past few days... It really is maddening, obscure, and nonsensical... And it's putting me in a really bad mood especially because I need to have it for a neurological condition, but the fact I have a neurological condition is getting in the way of me having it.

But I'm happy these days.

Happy birthday to Anne Ishii.

Wong Kar-Wai blowout and new trailer as his first English language feature (remember his BMW short The Hire) My Blueberry Nights gets ready to premiere at Cannes.

The first trailer at slashfilm here. Scroll down to see it.



NYTimes article on how a scene was shot and details from Wong himself.

Some interesting Variety articles here and here.

I know some people who worked on the film and nearly leaped (I'm not kidding) out of a taxicab as I coincidentally passed them shooting in Chinatown one night months ago. I hear interesting things, some total raves, others cautious lowering of expectations... That make me a little worried about the film. But I'm excited to see New York and other American locales shot by the collaboration of Wong and Darius Khondji, and very curious about the fact it was shot in only sixty days while on the road. He hasn't done that since Chungking Express.

I have that strange sensation that I have jet lag but I haven't been anywhere. It's been so tough to get out of a nocturnal rut.

Walking home at 3am, three girls on a stoop next to a funeral home smoking under a sodium streetlamp. "Hey, you got a second to support gay rights?"
"Sure."
"You support gay rights?"
"Yeah."
Silence.
Me, "Why, what's up?"
"Oh we just wanted to see if you'd say yes. You should go to hrc.org."
"That's all?"
"Yeah."

Here are things I've been doing:

Checking out a Takashi Murakami show in ten minutes flat because that's all there is. Skip it.
Eating a Bouchon Bakery sandwich in Central Park. It is the best tuna fish sandwich i've ever had in NY.
Giving up secrets while feeling shy and comfortable at the same time.
Drinking coffee and alcohol in the same day (something I haven't done in years).
Friday night staying up until ten am reading Jung making my head hurt. And then waking up in the evening. Bad.
Sweating for the first time as summer comes upon us. Grrr.
Late night phone calls until the battery dies. My favorite kind.
Fellow GR blogger Dan, Monkmus and I went to go get good burgers here in Park Slope. And when we came to the good burger place we saw a sign noting that it had been shut down for physical and mental health reasons. Mental health reasons.
Writing.
Tasty dinner with Cat Kim, followed by desert. So much food and good talking.
Pondering over my angry unreasonable neighbor's latest email rant about noise from the apartment because I have two friends over at 10pm "You should move to Williamsburg!" Is it because I wear v neck t shirts?
Enjoying the company of Lance Bangs.
Remembering how much I love Carson Ellis. I mean, look at this and then click on her name for one of my favorite blogs ever:



Seeing parts of Manhattan I've never seen before
Eating Snickers bars. Thank you Lactaid. Bizzare trivia: I had no idea I couldn't eat the dairy until the Giant Robot article about such. At the time I thought I had something severely wrong with me.

Stephen Colbert sings in Korean to one up Rain.

Singin' in Korean
Uploaded by sporkythespaz

Gondry in an ad for HP right here. Directed by his brother, Olivier.

Here's a little seen clip from Olivier that's amazing:

Yesterday was a complete wipeout because we wrapped the shoot at 6am. Physically wiped out, not mentally. Michel's predlicition for doing things in camera means you're bound to see some of the most amazing things you've ever witnessed happen right in front of you, for real. Sometimes two or three of those things at the same time and you don't even know where to look. So getting home I find I'm sleepless, amped up and wired by all the invention and ingeniousness I've been around.

Post shoot my place is always a disaster zone. So I need a day just to take care of all that and my body. I grew the biggest beard I've ever had. My hapa beard is funny. You can tell it wants to be a real beard, but it just doesn't get there all the way.

So I'm spending today just cleaning up and doing laundry and maybe meeting up with Dan later.

For this Friday, all I want to do is show for those of you too lazy to click through some of Dan-Ah's art that's featured on her website. One of my jobs as a socially awkward person when I'm shooting documentary stuff is to get to know everyone and make them feel relaxed so they are ok when I come around with a camera. I try. When I met Dan-Ah on the crew I was convinced I'd met her or something before but nothing clicked until a day later when I said GR. Apparently I maybe saw her at the GRNY kozyndan show last summer. And another example of the way I've always liked how Martin and Eric and Wendy and Michelle have built a community.

She is easily my new favorite illustrator. I haven't been this amazed by someone's work on first glance since I first stumbled upon Jenna Sohn's at Comic Con at the Poketo booth or Carson Ellis' and the thing is Dan-Ah is just out of school. She's going to get even better. I don't know if these are still for sale and her Printed Matter 2 prints sold out but there's stuff up here. You can click on these to make them bigger.

The person I met at the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show is a writer named Melena Ryzik. This is too good not to share, an article we talked about she wrote when she tried to refrain from shopping entirely for two weeks. Am I, whose major disgusting vices are pretty much solely videogames, strangely out of it by thinking that it would be enormously difficult to do that?

I haven't had time to edit or proofread these recent entries due to lack of sleep, but here are some more Yeah Yeah Yeahs pictures... Now I realize fairly obviously in what has to be one of the worst photos ever taken of me I'm not blowing a visual surprise by sharing these as they're now all over the place.

For the record, these are from my pocket camera. I shot with that huge hand cannon you see in that flickr pic linked above on a friends' camera but they're not mine to own.

















Still working on the shoot... One more day.

Funny thing here, Dan-ah Kim who showed at the grny Printed Matter show is working on the Gondry shoot, too. Check out her work at:

http://dkim-art.com

NY is strangely small and overwhelmingly large all at once.
Sent via blackberry

What a day... Gondry and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in one. And a full day working on a film set followed by a show. I'm beaten... But in that strange so exhausted I can't sleep, or still just wired and unable to come down just yet and so I'm wide awake.

Before I begin in earnest, this weekend I did a ton of yard work, cleaning up and getting ready for summer drinking or bbqing in the backyard. I've been putting off this big of a clean since I moved in here. It felt good to get dirty as all get out and pickup giant earthworms and throw em into soil. The big question is whether I or my friends escape laziness enough to actually bbq something back there which we never actually got around to doing last summer, which is frankly pathetic.

Caids, however, my stray cat, decided she wanted to sleep in a bag of dried up leaves that I had to get rid of.



Cat Kim and I went to a bbq Sunday that by the time we got there wasn't a bbq but more an evacuee trail from a freezing rooftop in a really swank apartment with babies running around. There was this funny moment where this baby just handed me this baby book for no reason at all and I went through it and thought it was really lame. Until Cat showed me that it actually had pages that flipped up and thus was actually interesting. And we didn't know anyone there after my friend left, except there were some funny famous people there. So I ended up talking to pretty much just Cat all night because she makes me laugh better than anyone right now and she's one of those people who even though she's new in my life I feel a little less awkward when I'm around her than usual. She gave me some wonderful presents, too, which if I wasn't exhausted I'd show but it'll have to wait for me being less demolished and bothering to turn on the lights to take pictures. I didn't get anything from anyone for my birthday other than my parents. Which isn't to say it's awful or sad, it didn't strike me that way, it just happens to be true. And as you get older seems to be more the case anyway. Cat giving me some of the things she's created with her hands and head and person balances that out for me, though, reminds me of how much a gift can elevate you for a moment and make you feel less disconnected from the world. I wish I could do the same for people, being able to give them something I made. But maybe my run of odd bad luck (or nerd luck, as she calls it) is going to finally end for a bit and I'm going to assume these are birthday presents and thus end the curse.

Can't say much about the Gondry thing, which I know is awful and teaseworthy, it's just that I signed an NDA. It was however a return to the 14+ hour day, 6am wakeup and catering trucks and self contained universes and all the atmosphere that goes with filmmaking. Not much to say other than it was great to watch Michel work, do my job, and see a lot of the same crew people from Be Kind Rewind. That was probably the best part, like a surrogate family reunion. And earnestly there was just something really pleasant about that crew, and the atmosphere working on that movie. So good to see everyone and catch up.

As soon as I had to leave that, I went over to a Yeah Yeah Yeahs show tonight, the quiet little thing that got all over music blogs and pitchfork.

Since there were enough flashbulbs to simulate a minor supernova enough, I'm sure this is going to be all over the place tomorrow anyway, so here's some pictures from the show taken on my little camera. Which may not have been a musically, technically flawless performance and had to accomodate some filming... But it was a tremendous show. It was exactly what a Yeah Yeah Yeahs show should be. Tiny, packed, sweaty, surreal, moving, intimate, fucked up, dangerous, loud, over the top, estrogen heavy, and at the end sweetly moving as Karen O led the entire audience out to the street down a dark tunnel singing Maps with everyone and it ended there in the street.

So why's it look so strange? Well, the second show was girls only, and people were requested to wear masks and dark clothing. Which made it all the better, as you can see. Fucking awesome.



And then to top it all off, I meet this really interesting person at the absolute tail end of the night and we share a cab ride back to our neighborhood as we're both going that way... And our cabdriver jumps in on a conversation and tells us how he used to do $200 of coke a day while selling $700 a day to wall street yuppies in the 80s. And how one day he up and decided to quiet after 7 years of daily cocaine use, and did it just like that with no problems. He is, of course, still addicted to smoking. How do you respond to that?

I love New York.

Ok, bedtime... Early call tomorrow.

Hectic times, here's a weekend quickie. Interesting article on the fixed gear bike scene in New York. I ride a hybrid because of the chesslike aspect of riding in this city - you have to be aware and plotting ahead at all times if you ride with any sense of speed whatsoever. I also like brakes and they've helped me get out of some serious scrapes. But it's interesting how a West Indies developed messenger hack so the bikes are harder to steal has led to a full blown subculture of riders.

And last night we watched El Topo, the other Jodorowsky movie that's been unavailable. I'm on a serious Jodorowsky kick. His commentaries are even worth listening to, in some cases even making the films better. He's a fearless artist to the point of insanity, but he's so good natured about it now in his 70s. Interesting side note: at one point he was set to make Dune starring Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, designs by Moebius (who collaborated with him on the Metabarons graphics novels) and HR Giger... And a double album soundtrack by Pink Floyd. I'll post more about that later in the week. I have to say it's number one on my list of films that never got made that should've.



Hard viewing but these two movies are truly some of the most unique films ever made.

Shooting Monday and Tuesday, so maybe won't be blogging for a bit.

Might have to take a break from blogging for a bit... Very hungover today, though that's not why... Just explains the lack of a daily post. Things are about to get really busy. As for today, after being cooped up for two weeks either cleaning muck from my apartment, writing treatments, and being sick I went out last night and the next thing I knew I'd drank too much already and at the point I made that realization that I had I figured why stop... Hadn't had one of those New York nights that stretch into the morning in so long. My first time really going out since I got back from the trip. This is a really easy city to get drunk in; some combination of its layout and how you can stumble into a taxi or train so easily and there are just bars everywhere. And if not that, it's also one of those cities where people don't look at you funny when you're going home and they're just getting up for work.

I was lucky enough, too, to meet this person named Catherine Kim and her friend Emily. Which was sort of funny. I'd never met Catherine in person before and had no idea what she looked like so I made a lot of awkward eye contact with people all night.

Catherine is young but oh so brilliant; I barely know her but you know sometimes how there are certain people you meet and you just have this sense that they're going to be sharing something interesting with the world? I've never known how to quanitfy or describe that invisible ether field that some people carry. Everything Catherine works on has quality already, even if some of it is just dabbling or her first try at a discipline. She's just smart as a whip and funny and fun, no maladjusted angst overwhelming what she does or her interests. And her friend Emily was just the same. Emily did the sweetest thing at 5am in a diner - she had to play me this band she was excited about, right there and then. Emily's a graphic design student at FIT and when she talks design she just lights up. The two of them were just so adorable together and hilarious but tuned in and sharp. Lately I've met creative people who seem to be in love with the world, or their creativity is dialed into less self tortured nonsense and into something better, and it's been inspiring to me. I was having a full blown migraine at 4am from all the drinking, and yet I was able to ignore it for awhile in their company.

So Bjork, Patrick Wolf, Beirut, Ben Gibbard, Final Fantasy, St. Vincent, The National, The Arcade Fire are all playing shows over the next few days in New York... It's almost more than I can bear and I was going to try and get into all of it. If you're in this city chances are you must be going to one of these. But I'm ditching all of it to go do some more shooting of Mr. Michel Gondry. It's worth it to me. I have to say that the thought of ever meeting the guy was unbearably nerve wracking. I'd even say that some of my stylistic intentions as a filmmaker come out of his shadow - I very purposely try to avoid doing anything close to what he does because I believe the world of videos is so full of second rate imitations of him. And he makes it so hard because he has so many ideas. He's just unbelievably unique - offhand ideas of his just flow out of him with a brilliance that you know is rare. And for all that he's a genuinely good person I like being around. I still get so mopishly shy around him, which is funny. They say you should never meet your heroes, because of dissapointment. I have to say that getting to watch Michel work and know him as a person is the reverse - you wish everyone could be so brilliant and kind.

I said this was unequivocal love week, which it hasn't been, really... But on my trip Nick and I talked about how easy cynicism is to cave into and how easy it is to be critical; but expressing good in things and what makes one feel good is hard, and maybe that's what time should be spent doing more often than tearing things down. The things that suck, they aren't worth the time perhaps? Here's to sharing stories of people who you find good.

And there's no way a little pocket camera could capture this, but here's the moon burning over the river crossing the Manhattan bridge at 530am. Another reason to love NY and the bridges here, and to live in Brooklyn, getting to see this every time I go home makes me smile.

Late last night I put on a DVD that film fanatics have been waiting for years against all hope to see. A restored transfer of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain. I feel... I've never taken acid but I feel like I did last night. Check out the box set here.

In the first ten minutes of this movie alone I saw:

A scary looking priest figure shaving the heads of two naked women in the weirdest set I've ever seen.
A bunch of insanely beautiful Cornell box style collages that seem to have some psychotic meaning.
A Jesus looking guy covered every inch in flies peeing himself.
A group of naked kids throwing stones at him with the help of a quadruple amputee after they pluck a flower from his palm stigmatically.
Fascist soldiers carrying flayed dog crucifixes.
Tourists taking pictures of innocents getting rounded up and shot in the streets and then sparrows fly from their bodies while the soldier has sex with a tourist woman while the husband films it laughing.
A reenactment of the arrival of Spanish conquistadors to the Mayan Empire played out entirely by real frogs and toads complete with blood and explosions on a scale model of Mayan temples.



Right after film school, eminently unemployable, having just used up all my money making a disastrous tour documentary... I took a job at Scarecrow Video. Seattle residents will know what I mean when I say the place is legendary. The video store employee gets an unfair rep in my book. First of all there's something about video stores that makes people stupid - an ether field of idiocy that affects PHDs as well as porn fanatics. I admit I myself get confused in the video store a lot. Everyone who worked at Scarecrow was a lowly paid passionate weirdo who did the job out of sheer love for the thing. Pay was terrible. But the owners did have us all on health insurance if we were full time employees.

These weren't geeks in the normal sense of the word. These were people who all had a shared love for the really deep shit, the rarest, most obscure, most exciting filmmaking from anywhere in the world. The DVD import market combined with an all region player made titles from around the world available before they had a minimal shot of getting a US theatrical release. You'd hear about Chan Wook Park and eight hour cuts from Italy of Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World and twenty year old guys who were desperate to find the bootleg copy of Turkish Star Wars before anyone would write it up on the Internet. Rare out of print Gamera movies rubbed shoulders with personal videotapes from director's home collections that required a deposit to take out. Bresson got as much play as Giallo. Film school couldn't touch the depths this place offered. There was analysis, and there was having your hands on every film ever made, even the out of print stuff that the film professors wouldn't want you to see anyway.

And the holy grail was The Holy Mountain. Which is impossible to describe. It's a nonstop surreal barrage of ritualistic, profane and profound religious iconography from every culture imaginable. Every second of the film you'll either see one of the most disturbing, funny, or insane images of your life - most of the time concurrently. It was funded by the Beatles' manager Allen Klein after John and Yoko freaked out over Jodorowsky's El Topo (the other holy grail which comes out as part of the box set). 30 years later the producer and director have finally settled their feud and for the first time people can see the movie without it being a third generation VHS dub of a region 2 dvd made from a japanese laserdisc.

I will warn you that The Holy Mountain is not easy viewing; but unlike most obscure artsy nonsensical films it somehow has a sense of pace and humor that makes it less difficult to watch than you'd think. What it is however is an assemblage of some of the most bizzare imagery ever recorded in front of a camera. You can't spoil the plot of this movie, but one thing I will give away: there's a moment where a half body shaven 80 year old man squirts milk out of cheetah head boobs that magically appear. That's one moment amongst thousands. Most people who see the film remark that it is the single strangest film they've ever seen. And the fact you can rent it at Blockbuster now, well that's some kind of remarkable. It's full of trangressive, subversive, sacriligeous, violent, freakish imagery (there were two points where I nearly turned it off, and there's some animal cruelty that's sad). But I can promise you seeing this film will do something deep in that synaptic core of yours, somehow.

Lupe Fiasco spills on his new album.

I'm probably going to see Patrick Wolf on May 9th at the Bowery, somewhere in between Arcade Fire shows and Ben Gibbard's solo show in town. Here's a pretty little quote by the guy from a Pitchfork piece, talking about his favorite radio show...

In Britain we're an island, you know, so after the news, at 12 midnight they have 10 minutes of a news-reader reading out the weather for ships. It's more important than the weather in a way. It's very romantic; I know a lot of people that that's their favorite radio show. You basically close your eyes, and they read out all the weathers on the sea around England. I've always been very inspired by that. You can just escape, put your headphones on, and they read out places you'll never go in your life. They read almost out to the North Sea, exactly what the temperature is and what the waves are. It's a drug-free adventure.

After an absence I've come back to myspace so please add yourself as a friend... And the old otaku-house website is closed down for now. There's a point where you shouldn't have your film school work up for people to see, you know?

Tomorrow launch party for Tomorrow Unlimited, the new venture from the people who were behind the sadly missed Resfest and Res magazine.

And it looks like I might have another video lined up... Fingers crossed.

Starting May 4th in NY and LA, if you can't get into Spider-Man 3... Paris, Je T'aime is an anthology film of shorts all set in Paris. What raises it above the level of most anthology films is the level of directors involved. Alfonso Cuaron, The Coen Bros., Gus Van Sant, Christopher Doyle, Tom Twyker, and Gurinder Chadha amongst many more. I'll see it for Cuaron's alone.



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Also out today, a bunch of Elvis Costello reissues... Been listening to him a lot lately.