Language · · Tucson
Transubstantiation
When we pronounce catholic, we swallow the o like a little communion wafer.
Notes · · Tucson
The Book Stop is 50.
Fifty? Wowza.
Hiram and I found this out on Saturday when we stopped in on our way to the John Waters Christmas show at the Rialto. There were plates of cookies and a big thermos of lemonade. It was around 7:00 I think — practically past our bedtime — which made the eating and drinking all the more delicious.
I remembered all the hours I spent at the store when I was in high school and decided to re-read something I would have been reading then, but there was no Richard Brautigan or Kurt Vonnegut available. We've been reading Oliver Sacks's autobiography, On The Move, and in it he's mentioned plenty of authors I've never read but have this idea I should — W.H. Auden, for example. I asked the owner for a recommendation of something by Auden and she said she'd never read him either, so I know I'm in good company. I bought a hardback of his collected works printed the year I was born a couple years before the Book Stop opened.
Happy Anniversary, Book Stop. We have always been close, but I didn't realize we were contemporaries.
Plates of cookies sit on the counter at the Book Stop, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
Television ·
Stranger Things, Season 2
Missing from the Eggo, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Three Musketeers and other product placements in Stranger Things so far has been any reference to Mister Microphone. You know, one of the characters — I'm thinking Dustin — saying we'll be back to pick you up in an hour?
It's not like it would be any more out of place than the Chicago detour.
Cineclub ·
The B-Side
The B-Side: Elsa Dorfman's Portrait Photography. Dir. Errol Morris. 2016
If you're a kind of a “Oh, this'll be the same forever” person… or if you're a photographer and you're always nailing down what's the now… when you realize it doesn't matter how much you try to nail down the now, the now is racing beyond you.
— Elsa Dorfman
Notes · · Tucson
November
Now that November is almost over, November is finally here.
Notes · · Tucson
Good Old Oil Prices
For years I have thought the NPR announcer (all of them) doing the market report was saying “good old oil prices” Apparently, they’re saying “crude oil prices.”
Nevermind.
Notes · · Tucson
The Bees Outside My Bedroom Window
If I played banjo, I could write and perform a song called The Bees Outside My Bedroom Window. In it I would sing about grandma's biscuits, which I eat hot from the oven with butter and honey from the bees outside my bedroom window.
Notes · · Tucson
What is a snood?
On my way home from work last night I bought some of that new bread I am embarrassed about liking at the Co-Op on Fourth Avenue. The bread has about two dozen different grains and seeds in it, is a bit sweet, and the bag has a caricature of the long-haired, moustached company founder — who looks like he could be an ex-convict — playing guitar with his big muscles.
I think about how exciting this bag of bread would have been to me when I was experiencing puberty. Perhaps I would have made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with it to eat while watching Midnight Express.
It turns out the founder is an ex-convict who got out of prison, perfected his bread recipe, and began speaking motivationally. Afterward, he could buy all the guitars he wanted and cars to drive them around in.
What's my point? Oh, right. Since Tiny Town Gallery is a couple doors down from the Co-Op and I'd read on the internet that Issue 2 of the Tiny Town Times, the risograph quarterly the gallery publishes with Tanline Printing, is available — Hurrah! — I stopped in and picked up a copy, which is free. Full disclosure: I say so not because I know it's free, but only because they didn't try to stop me when I walked out of the store without paying for it.
Issue 2 of the Tiny Town Times includes this tiny portrait of Club 818 in which I recognize people and places in words on paper and recall exuberant times.
Notes · · Tucson
The Spanish Word for Conversation Pit
How effortlessly we forget the Spanish word for conversation pit.
Cineclub · · Tucson
Blade Runner 2049
I enjoyed the new Blade Runner. I also enjoyed this spot on review of it by Cintra Wilson. I also very much wanted the evil corporate replicant to win. Alas, Luv does not conquer all.
Blade Runner 2049. Dir. Denis Villeneuve. 2017
Notes · · Tucson
Laundry Day Tip
Laundry Day Tip: If you want people to talk to you and tell you what they think at the laundromat, just add three tennis balls to the dryer.
Cineclub ·
Herakles
“Would he clean the Augean stables?” Werner Herzog's first film asks this and other questions.
Via Open Culture
Found ·
Billy Eichner Wants You to Know He’s Mainstream
I am not an outsider. The persona of ‘‘Billy on the Street’’ may feel like an outsider, but Billy Eichner is not. I never let people tell me that I should be grateful for a crumb of success. There aren’t many openly gay guys in America who have had the success that I’ve had in comedy. I take ownership over the fact that ‘‘Billy on the Street’’ and ‘‘American Horror Story’’ are mainstream successes, and they should be seen as such, because there is power in the mainstream. What changes things is to be in the mainstream, to be Ellen DeGeneres, to be Will and Grace. Just because you don’t get me doesn’t make me an outsider. I feel like I’m at the heart of it all. Whether you come to the party or not is up to you.
Videos · · Mexico City
Faces on posters, too many choices
Hiram does a little dance in front of Cine Tonalá on a wet morning.
Notes · · Mexico City
Roma
We're in Mexico City, in the notorious Roma neighborhood, trying not very hard to not stand out while trying not to look like we're trying too hard to fit in. You know how it goes.
It's even gayer here than we thought it would be so if we come back, next time we'll be sure to do lots of push ups first so our chests will be ready and perhaps we'll also work on a time machine so our skin looks younger.
But we won't go for protein shakes and cigarettes after the gym. Which seems to be a popular workout routine here.
Some good news is that for the first time in my travels in another country I seem to have worn shoes that nobody looks down on. I have been wearing Converse sneakers for years, but this visit lots of other grown men are wearing them too, so nobody cares. I'm invisible.
While we're at dinner eating one of my favorite Mexican foods — Argentinian food — a fashionably dressed man in a geometrically patterned black-and-white shirt who seems to have 1985 on a speed dial app he keeps checking sits down at the table next to ours, blocking Hiram's view of another man wearing a sweater on his shoulders. Hiram confides he's always thought the sweater tied around the shoulders is a silly look, but when seated at the dinner table? And when it's 76 degrees out? It's really upsetting him. I have long known about the Mexico City Brideshead Revisted cosplay enthusiasts, but the strong feeling it provokes in Hiram is something I have never known about him.
Hiram improvises some popular local Brideshead Revisited cosplay.
Lots of things can bubble to the surface when couples travel together. It's healthy, you know?
Anyhow, we want to thank the man from 1985 for helping us enjoy our dinner with his line of sight prophylaxis but suddenly it dawns on us: What if he is Information Society and just wants some privacy? If so, we should probably respect that.
So we do.
Sounds · · Tucson