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New Radio Crush: Fair Game with Faith Salie.
This past month I reunited with my sweet love the radio. There are new shows on WNYC and a new schedule!
The partial reason for my rekindled affair is that I don't have internet in my studio anymore. I lost my connection mysteriously and quite honestly I don't miss it. Instead I take my laptop to the good old neighborhood public library for my wifi. I look at real newspapers, some new books and rent DVD's while I'm there. The building is beautiful too. Unfortunately I get the feeling that most of the day the library is a sort of halfway house for nappers, nanny's, old people and kids using the free computers for video games. Sounds like public school all over again to me.
Anyhow, this new program Fair Game is great. It's funny, insightful, playful, intelligent and creative. Best of all it's not prime time radio so it's really relaxed. It does exactly what great radio should do which is make you feel like your having a personal and intimate experience listening. This doesn't just go for artsy This American Life stuff... think of the old guy glued to his transistor listening to his favorite baseball team in a contested game. That's great radio too!
Fair Game is on WNYC AM 820 weeknights at 8pm.

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(click on image to enlarge and read)
This article is from the NY times about a week ago. At first glance I was excited to read about a pastoral take on Bambi. However the article isn't specifically about aesthetics... which is what I love about Bambi. In 2005 I went to a residency in Florida that had state-of-the-art media facilities. Our "master artist" Fiona Rae made us watch the remastered version of Disney's Bambi digitally projected on a large screen. It was (and is) visually breath-taking. The forest scenes are richly layered and saturated with real pigments. The layering of frames to create depth is actually a technique used by Hitchcock in many films such as the Birds. In addition to layering film he would paint directly on the actual celluloid. Bambi is much more a painters film than an animation film to me. I especially enjoy the lush fires and "man's" violent chaos on nature in a form that would have put any abstract expressionist to shame. This article is not about that. It's more about the Disney's "Disney" version of a comment on the lack of compassion and conservation of habitat, animal rights and moral responsibility.
If you get the chance, rent it and watch on a big beautiful screen.

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The theme song to the final scene in my hypothetical autobiographical science fiction thriller.

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Orson Wells outtakes.

Friday

Worth the $12 admission right there. L on the observation deck of The New Museum at near sunset.

Top 10 or So.

In no particular order:

Raging Bull
Blade Runner
Until The End of The World
Vertigo
A History of Violence/Eastern Promises
Manhattan/Annie Hall/Stardust Memories
Spinal Tap
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
The Good The Bad and The Ugly
Dark Days

The Cronenberg films are together because they're both great and have the same lead actor. I have no definitive favorite Woody but those three are the tops. The fantasy Frankenstein scene in Stardust Memories sort of describes a lot of my romantic troubles. I've been on a massive Netflix binge these last few months... okay, the whole winter. I've watched about three movies per week (in addition to being nearly half way through The Wire). My favorites are still my favorites. I wonder if they will stay that way? Is it possible my personality, likes and aesthetics are all worked out now? I like change, I need change (sometimes), change is healthy. However, there is something comforting about knowing my favorites.
Some runner-ups are: Citizen Kane (the first and last 3 minutes are the most beautiful in cinema), Little Miss Sunshine, The Bad Lieutenant and Happy Together.

A Few of My Favorite Things: Part 4

Tree Whispering
Conscious Horseback Riding
Our Lady of Weight Loss
The Tai Chi Golf Swing
Happy Anyway!
Mediating Dangerously
Tango With the Buddha
Crazy Sexy Cancer Boot Camp
Mating in Captivity
Flying Trapeze
Tap Dance in Fun!
I Thought It Was Just Me
Momfulness
What’s Next?
Death & The Art of Dying
Advanced Shapeshifting
Being With Flowers

These titles are the names of workshops at the Omega retreat in Rhinebeck, NY. I selected my personal favorites from a huge catalog overflowing with them. If you think these titles are bizarrely hilarious, request a catalog and read the descriptions.
Or maybe it's just my own silly sense of humor that finds delight in this stuff. Next blog entry I'll be listing my top 10 movies
thus far.