7.

Something
you had once
is why there's
a past tense.

Anyone
can say please
that's been hurtin'
tell it to the second person.

Vicodin country
by funicular entry
Rancho Relaxo
by appointment to the gentry.

Vestigial barb
on a red branch
plausible to pollen
but otherwise not often.

Some days
the heat's off
& spring goes out
the open window.

Talismanic
ordinary chalices
huddled masses
take their chances.

Advancing thought
like they ought
the moon trails its coat
across their throat.

David Thomson on the (don't miss) British TV film trilogy RED RIDING

Call that a movie? you say, as if you believed in pictures with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But haven’t you noticed that no one has that trick or the heart to do it that way now? So many movie stories are humiliated by their tellers’ lack of faith, or by our carelessness—why watch if you can’t follow it? There is a struggle going on in the best filmmaking, and it has to do with this anxiety or suspicion: Do films cheat life any more persistently than by insisting on story? Suppose there are just the years passing and the burial ground of all our forlorn attempts at progress...

They have something of a love-hate relationship with their neighbors in Dumbo, appreciating the many services and stores now ensconced next door, but disturbed by increasing traffic, by the shadows of new condo towers and, it must be said, by unwelcome evidence that Dumboites are walking their dogs in Vinegar Hill...

NYT piece on lovely Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn where I once happily spent a week...

Vinegar Hill Historic District

Vancouver Report: The Remains of the Olympiad has a brief interview with Ken Lum, whose magnificent Monument for East Vancouver (above) was my recent visit's happiest surprise, appearing magically out of the sky while I was being driven back to the East End from downtown last Saturday...

Jackie Gleason Manipulating Space and Time

definitive 9 minute version of the greatest song ever!! Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers - Roadrunner (Thrice)

check out this awesome video by handsome Vancouver synthpoppers "Christine", who I shared the stage with at the Candahar Bar on Saturday night! & thanks everyone for making it such a blast!

YouTube - Christine - Bad Doo Wop

Art on the Tracks

Yesterday, driving down Airport Way South, this little art parlor appeared in my peripheral vision. It's just sitting there, next to the train tracks, up against and on the I-5 retaining wall...

YouTube - Alice in Wonderland (1903)

The first-ever film version of Lewis Carroll's tale has recently been restored by the BFI National Archive from severely damaged materials. Made just 37 years after Lewis Carroll wrote his novel and eight years after the birth of cinema, the adaptation was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, and was based on Sir John Tenniel's original illustrations. In an act that was to echo more than 100 years later, Hepworth cast his wife as the Red Queen, and he himself appears as the Frog Footman. Even the Cheshire cat is played by a family pet.

With a running time of just 12 minutes (8 of which survive), Alice in Wonderland was the longest film produced in England at that time. Film archivists have been able to restore the film's original colours for the first time in over 100 years...

Weaponizing Mozart

Britain might not make steel anymore, or cars, or pop music worth listening to, but, boy, are we world-beaters when it comes to tyranny. And now classical music, which was once taught to young people as a way of elevating their minds and tingling their souls, is being mined for its potential as a deterrent against bad behavior...

fine Basil Bunting birthday celebration over at ::: wood s lot :::