Portable Thoughtables

I was depressed today because of some o.c.d.-related (at least I think it may be correct to term them as that, but then this here bracketed clarification may well be o.c.d.-related in itself – arghh, I HATE this aspect of my mind!) worries that had been overwhelming me but I’ve chatted to Shantoozy who is wonderful at helping my brain, and helping me get into a state where I can think up ways myself for helping my brain, and now I’m feeling a lot better. Of course (and this is not being pessimistic but rather just realistic, borne of much past experience), the worries will return but hopefully I can quash them forever in good time.

On another subject, my writing is coming along okay but in the next week or two I’m going to hopefully have a laptop computer, which will really help me. It shall just be a dirt-cheap older model that I (hopefully) find at the computer swap meet at Collingwood Town Hall. I’m expecting the battery to be dead or dying so I’ll need to plug it into to a power outlet but, still, I’ll be able to move it around the house, have it in bed with me (on top of my lap) or even, with the assistance of an extension cord, out in the yard if I want to. There’s something about being portable – I don’t know, maybe it appeals to the trampishness in my nature – but somehow it really seems to help inspire me in my literary endeavours. I like the feeling of freedom it gives – free range to venture anywhere in the multi-coloured universe of my mind – anywhere, that is, where three slanty little holes incise the eternally stretching brick wall at the parameters of my cosmos of cognition.

Writer's Block Outside The Apartment Block

Yesterday I posed for that young scamp, Toxic Lash, in a beautifully disgusting photograph series detailing a writer sitting at his antique typewriter suffering writer's block who starts vomiting alphabet pasta letters and ends up spewing up a storm of carrot and tomato chunks mixed in with the 'Alphaghetti'. He started out blocked but before you know it the pasta phrases "BULLSHIT" and "TRUTH AND BEAUTY" have poured from his mouth.

The shoot was undertaken outside the apartment block across the road where the afternoon sunlight was still good. It was peak-hour and the traffic would come regularly to a standstill, allowing the commuters fine opportunity for inspecting the activities. I noticed several smirks. At one point my neighbour walked past with her daughter and stopped to view the spectacle of me soaking my shirt and grey woollen vest in faux vomit dribbled from my cheesy, tomatoey gob, and tried to explain to her young-un why the hell we so-called adults were behaving this way in public. When Hissy Kitty, assistant to the photographer, offered them the unopened tins of 'Alphaghetti' that were left over from our endeavour, they declined. I can't imagine what may have turned them off such a culinary treat.

It will take about four weeks for the photos to be ready so that's why there is no example here to show you at the moment. And your stomach heaves, yes, but 'tis fortunately only a sigh of relief!

Focus, Mi Lad

Put bluntly, it is difficult for me to deal with the fact that most humans are stupid and are arseholes. Shantoozy was watching that hideous piece of vile filth, ‘The Biggest Loser’, on television just before and such shows, and their raison d’etre, are wont to inspire such difficulties for me. It shakes my nervous system up. I really am quite a sensitive creature. Pity me.

(No, not really. But you can buy me fun presents, if you like.)

Ah, but it’s important to try to remain focused on the good things in life, and the good people and the friendly dogs and the great poets and artists of the ages (good friends between wraps or hard covers, on DVDs and in CD jewel-cases, etc.).

Well, of course I would say something like that. The name of mi blog is ‘Daisies In The Gutter’.

Now, though, my mind is down the drain. I’ll dredge it up for more stimulating erudition soon, ol’ chums.

Mary, Marty, Larry

I got around to watching “Sparrows”, starring Mary Pickford, on an evening last week. It was my first Mary Pickford movie and I must say that I found it excellent; a beautifully photographed and captivating thriller where a villainous family run an hideous baby farm in the swamps from which Mary must help the maltreated children escape. There were alligators and quickmud quagmires and even a vicious dog with a continually wagging tale that dispelled any illusion that it was in any way actually vicious. But that’s okay, it was an enjoyable movie.

I had never felt particularly inspired to watch “Little Mary”, as she was known contemporarily, because her real-life personality put me off somewhat; she was politically right-wing and I know what Chaplin meant when he said in his “My Autobiography” that her business and legal acumen saddened him. I was aware of the flaw in this attitude of mine, for a person’s real-life silliness does not necessarily preclude an ability to be appealing as a performer (although, I have never been able to enjoy John Wayne in any respect - to me, the Duke is a Dork), and hence it only put me off somewhat. I found hers to be quite an appealing on-screen personality, so now the affection she elicited of silent cinema scholars like Edward Wagenknecht and Kevin Brownlow makes a bit more sense to me than it did.

I highly recommend this classic 1926 film. Yes, I do!

A quick word on the print I viewed: This was one released by ‘Kino On Video’ on videotape. The picture quality was quite good, although not excellent; it had a somewhat muted and contrasty picture that leads me to suspect that it was not transferred from an original negative. Plus, having been manufactured in the U.S.A., the tape was in the N.T.S.C. rather than PAL format and that will, of course, always diminish pictorial quality.

… Recently I also watched the complete third season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, Larry David’s already-classic TV show. Martin Scorsese was one of the guest performers (as himself, of course) and was amusing. Oddly enough, I don’t recall noticing his eyebrows during these shenanigans. His eyebrows were always the most unwieldy I can ever recall having seen on an human being but perhaps he finally decided to trim them for this stint in front of the camera. Hmm…

Happy Birthday Anniversary, Sir Charles!

Yes, it’s that day of the year again, the 16th of April, the anniversary of the birth of Sir Charles Spenser Chaplin, great clown-poet of human times. He was born to music hall parents at 8PM at East Street, Walworth, in London. He made sweet and funny movies. Happy 117th Birthday Anniversary, Sir Charles!

Today we visited with friends and ate plenty of good food, being as it is also, coincidentally, Easter Sunday. The best culinary treat was, however, the incredible coconut custard cream pie Shantoozy made in honour of Sir Charles. Although Chaplin was Hollywood’s first comedian to eschew pie-throwing humour, he certainly was a skilled slinger in his earliest films, and the custard cream pie is still a nice symbol of old-style silver screen merriment.

In the photo you can see (now that I've actually posted the photo here, a day after writing this!) that I am wearing my Charlie necktie, Charlie cufflinks (well, you can see the light's reflection on a cufflink, not really the cufflink itself as such) and bowler hat. I had my bamboo wigger-wagger cane with me today also.

This evening, back at home, another friend of mine popped over and we drank red wine and watched the Chaplin short “Pay Day” from 1922.

Magic Lantern Tomes

I took a jaunt along High Street recently with Shantoozy and Hissy Kitty and I lay-byed some film related books at a bookshop there. I’m getting back into compiling my film reference book library. I am a collector. I face that fact. I embrace it. I personally like collecting things that have a practical purpose, like books and DVDs. There are collectors who go too far and one mustn’t go too far, of course. What is ‘too far’? I suppose buying a book on the overrated Tom Hanks or the rubbishy films of Michael Bay would, for examples, be going too far.

I appreciate and can personally relate to what Martin Scorsese said about his own film reference book library - he finds them inspiring. Of course, his medium is solely film, whereas mine is writing of various kinds – stage-plays, screenplays, novels, poetry, reviews, short stories – I ain’t choosy – but the inspirational effect is similar. In fact, my writing has generally always possessed a cinematic quality. Apparently, James Joyce concocted his novel “Ulysses” in the form of a movie.

My first novel was originally conceived as a film but if you want total creative control over your work then film is probably the last medium I’d recommend – unless you are extremely fortunate, you are going to have to compromise and bow down to the demands of many other people who also have fingers in the pot of what is at best a collective art form and at worst a collective industry – or else you’ll be forced to make poorly funded garage-style movies which generally can’t but help look cheaply made and whose budgetary constraints also dictate much compromise. I’m certainly not against working in these ways; indeed, I plan to make a couple of short, poorly funded films in the near future (there are benefits to be gained from such work) and have plans for co-writing with Shantoozy what we hope may be a commercially viable feature film, but my most serious work shall still be of the printed-on-paper variety, I think. At least, at this juncture.

I also have eventual plans for a novel about a bullying film critic.

I realize that I was feeling somewhat displaced having turned away from my interest in cinema history. A great benefit of my continually growing knowledge in this area, through personal as well as tertiary study, means that I will be able to teach about it when I attain the appropriate degree/s. Of course, it’s early days yet and so who knows? I may end up becoming an hobo instead.

The Old Fart's Brick Path

Tired, so tired, Mademoiselles and Monsieurs. Nonetheless, I felt I should update this humble blog. There are some things I want to talk about but I shall leave them for when I am more energetic of mind and fingertips. I offer here now just some small dalliances along the brick path of my life of late.

University is going fine. Handed in my first assignment - a review of some stage-play about what it means to be un-Australian, with especial regards to sports competition. Are you as enthralled as I at that theme? Zzzzzzz...

Got two porn magazines as junk mail recently. My whole street did, I believe - except those fools who had 'no junk mail' stickers on their letter-boxes, hee-hee! Porno as JUNK MAIL, I tells ya! And not one, but TWO!! Why? I don't know. How did they get away with it? I don't know. One copy of "Playboy Vixens" and one copy of "Score" ('Loaded with big-tit babes' ... '#1 in big boobs'). We're not talking 'Bras 'N' Things' catalogues. We're talking wide-open beavers. I wonder what the little old Greek ladies along the street felt about those shaven pussies and all.

One of my best friends moved to South America on the weekend, for about a year and an half. He hosted going-away drinks at two pubs in Brunswick on Friday night. I didn't get home until about 3:30 AM which is unusual for me these days, old fart that I have become. My friend shall be sorely missed. But, like most people who make such dramatic overseas moves, I suspect he shall return before then. Or maybe that's merely selfish hopefulness.

I tried to watch "Madame de..." (1953), directed by Max Ophuls, tonight but the subtitles were often white on white which made it too much of a strain to continue watching. It is screening soon at Cinémathèque so I shall try to see it there as it shall almost surely be a better print, with better subtitling. I'm really getting back into watching movies and I shall explain my rationale for such in my next post - when, as I've said, I am more 'with it'. Tomorrow night I think Shantoozy and I shall watch "Sparrows" (1926), starring Mary Pickford and directed by William Beaudine.