hello. i’ve been getting requests to start posting again. it’s very flattering. i’ve been tired and stressed out and out of sorts lately, culminating in this evening, just a couple hours ago, when i was holding a tissue to my bloody nose and coughing up blood on the beach. true story. so you see, i’m falling apart a little. but i’ll be back soon, i promise, and that goes for voicemails to ben too! new stuff’s a-comin’. just wait for me to be in one piece again.
in the meantime, my summer is going to be largely dedicated to volunteering at a jim henson exhibit at the experience music project; here’s something i’ve been turned on to already, from henson’s show sam and friends, featuring an early version of kermit. i promise it will make you happy.
this is an early commercial:
and these are a series of little sponsor pieces. they’re way violent and silly; the tall guy’s name is wilkins, and the short one is won’tkins… get it?
i don’t care about the time harrison ford gave me a dirty look as i was walking to work, or the time julianne moore gave me a dirty look as she was unloading her car, or the time brenda’s crazy brother from six feet under gave me a dirty look when i was on my lunch break, or when pete seeger gave me a really, really dirty look at a buffet table… yeah, i don’t know what that’s about… there are three, wait, no, four celebrity encounters i care about; three because they’re idols and one because it was really, really silly.
1. when i talked to philip glass on his stoop and he told me that since i lived in chinatown i should go to the markets there and buy fresh vegetables and cook them in my dorm, and i was so starstruck i could hardly speak and then i walked through washington square park looking for people i know so i could tell them i met philip glass and when i told my friend dan he went, “wait, are you walking through the park looking for people you know so you can tell them you met philip glass?”
2. when i stood across from former poet laureate robert pinsky at a buffet (yeah, most of these somehow involve food, often a buffet) and we had the following conversation:
rp: what do you suppose these are?
me: i think those are portabello mushrooms.
rp: i think the best thing to do would be to take a little of everything. and then you can decide what you like best and come back for more.
me: that sounds like a good idea.
3. a couple weeks ago, when i met jonathan goldstein, and when i told him i’d written a short story inspired by his book, his facial expression seemed better suited as a reaction to something like “we’re going to have to amputate,” but what he said was, “that’s really nice to hear,” so i chose to remember that part.
4. and now, this, which happened today. some background: jens lekman, whom you should be concerned with because this is a clip of him at a concert where i was actually in attendance, with his opening act, a twelve-piece barbershop group
is coming to seattle in june, and i’m going to see him, the first person i’ve ever seen in concert twice (i know), so i was gettin’ ampred and tooling around his website and found this:
Topic for the month of April: The Cold War
This will be the compulsory main subject of your e-mail. If you write to me it will have to be about this. If you wanna talk about something else you will have to make associations, find reference points.
Last months topic was a great success, it made our communication rise to a whole new level.
so, being the diligent nerd that i am, i promptly responded:
Dear Jens,
You’re wonderful and I’m your biggest fan and all that, but to the point: the Cold War. I was a movie reviewer in New York for a little while and I wrote a review of a documentary about the launch of Sputnik and its effects on the Cold War. Cool, huh? It’s here: http://www.nypress.com/article-18047-the-russians-were-coming.html
And here:
The Russians Were Coming
Comprehensive and well-researched, Sputnik Mania informs but doesn’t entertain
Sputnik Mania
Directed by David Hoffman
at IFC Center
In recent years, the documentary genre has been taken down from its musty shelf in the public television library, dusted off and given a makeover. Michael Moore has emerged as an unlikely rock star of the American left; Morgan Spurlock, the Evel Knievel of documentarians, combined the voyeuristic appeal of reality television with old-fashioned muckraking in Super Size Me; then others have found success using children as their subjects, shaking loose the grown-up stuffiness of the genre. Plus, directors have tapped into the American love of quirk, producing documentaries on subjects like crossword puzzles, wheelchair rugby, a love story about a man who throws acid in his girlfriend’s face and a Donkey Kong competition. Compared to these, the Ken Burns model seems doomed to be forever relegated to classrooms and museums. David Hoffman’s documentary Sputnik Mania, about the launch of the Sputnik satellite and its influence on the Cold War, is a return to tradition.
Based on Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: Shock of the Century, Sputnik Mania is composed of equal parts voiceover narration (by a magisterial Liev Schreiber), archival footage and present-day interviews. Like most documentaries, it circumnavigates its subject, examining it from every possible angle: public fear of a Communist investigation and the exploitation of that fear by the media; the story of Laika, the first dog sent into space; “rocket fever” among American teenagers; and the foundation of NASA.
What Hoffman doesn’t do, although he may have intended it, is draw a parallel between his story and the current political climate. Fear mongering is certainly something we’ve become familiar with in recent years, but any further conclusions on the subject are left entirely up to us.
The absence of a modern message makes Sputnik Mania feel somewhat incomplete, like a textbook lesson without a compelling message. But how much of that expectation comes from the flamboyant documentaries we’ve become accustomed to in recent years, which are often tragically flawed in their inability to rein in enthusiasm for their subjects? Sputnik Mania is not riveting; but it is, first and last, informative. It’s the BBC World News to Morgan Spurlock’s Daily Show; and as any well-rounded student of current events can attest, the ideal is to have a little of both.
…So there you have it! I’m coming to see you in Seattle in June. I have curly hair and glasses; come find me and we can talk Soviet aeronautics.
Yours,
Raphaela
and today, lo and behold, look what showed up in the ol’ inbox:
all right, movie industry, i know your game. you think i’m going to watch these trailers and be all, “oh my god they’re so quirky and they’re probably going to be adorable and make me want to listen to some belle & sebastian songs alone in my room!”
well, joke’s on you: i was gonna listen to belle & sebastian alone in my room anyway. so there.
***also! i am working on a super secret other blog project! stay tuned!***
thought you might need one. stephin merritt, of course, is the man behind the magnetic fields, and he’s someone you should be concerned with because he wrote the words
a pretty girl in her underwear
a pretty girl in her underwear
if there’s anything better in this world, who cares?
so anyway, this movie
was hecka scary. i think a lot of little kids are having nightmares because of it, as we speak.
there’s a lot going on. today i met jonathan goldstein, i have like seventy screenprinting ideas, i have been sort of trying my hand at making comics, and i had pho today for the first time in like infinity because it was two degrees kelvin outside in seattle. (here’s the part where i mention that last week i literally got a sunburn, and that people who are still denying that global climate change exists should go find some holocaust deniers and southern apologists and have themselves an idiot party.)
but for now, i’ll just tell you that i’m on ben’s website again, so go have a look.
1. did you know seattle had a mindblowing soul night? neither did i, until tonight.
2. my parents and i went to the zoo today. i have an irrational but powerful fear of snakes and komodo dragons. little kids looking at big animals are the cutest people on the planet.
3. this band
so good.
4. this man
[jens lekman] is performing in seattle in june and i am going going going. i saw him new york last year… this may be my first instance of concert recidivism, ever. it will be worth it.
5. i’m writing a story that may or may not be harry potter influenced. okay, it is. stop judging me. it’s not all my fault– i’m reading tintin in the new world. influence happens.
6. jonathan goldstein, THE HOST OF WIRETAP (what’s wiretap? whaddaya, not know me at all?) is doing a reading in seattle on monday, and sherman alexie’s doing one across town, which means it will be me and like two other people in the audience, and i might possibly get up the nerve to tell him thatlenny bruce is dead was, like, totally a huge inspiration for me, like, as a writer, man.
whoa, y’all: have you ever read something someone else wrote, about something you wrote, about something they wrote? well, i hadn’t either, until today:
