Darker Than The Swoon Of Lavender, Softer Than Guitars Or Kittens
(I stole this picture of Deleuze from my friend Zee’s blog, which you should read.)
I have a lot of things I want to write about, but I’m trying not to be overzealous with my blogging. Also, I’m very self conscious about my grammar lately, which is terrible, and it exhausts me. Why can’t editors just let me be James Joyce, and invent my own language based on English?
But Caleb should be arriving on a plane from Hong Kong in 2 hours, and I’m building up a lot of nervous energy. I remember talking to a girl, many years ago, who had a long distance relationship with her husband. Every time they would meet up, they would do so in a public place, so that they had some time to adjust to the temperature of each other. The plunge into intimacy is intense to bear, even if you’ve only been separated for two weeks.
So, to kill some time, I’m going to make a list of things that I’ve been interested in today. Hopefully, tomorrow at work, you’ll find something within to kill time.
1. So, this is bragging (sorry!), but after watching the 400m hurdles last night, I checked my high school’s website to check if I still hold the school record in the same event. According to the list, which is probably dated, I do, along with lesser records in 100m hurdles, long jump, and the 4 x 100m relay.
Now, this might seem kind of impressive, but it’s really not. The only reason why I hold the record is because one day one of my coaches made me run the race. Even if I came in last, I’d score points at the meet. I turned out not to be terrible at it, and the next year—my sophomore year—they made me the captain of the entire varsity team.
They then went on to try to train me to kill it in sectional, and even the New York state meet—for which I qualified—but it made me so nervous to run that on race days, I would pray to God that he would break one of my legs so I could bow out easily. Seriously. I would sit, screwing my spikes into my flats, and under my breath, repeat, “please break my leg, please break my leg,” like a mantra. Eventually, the pressure became so great that I just didn’t show up for the state qualifying tournament, and never again spoke to any of the coaches on the team. One of my greatest shames.
In any case, it makes me excited to watch the event at the Olympics.
2. The other day, I watched the film “Jiro Dreams of Sushi,” which is a flick about this 85 year old dude who looks like a baby turtle and also makes sushi. The sushi is apparently excellent, because his restaurant, which is in a subway station in Tokyo, has three Michelin stars.
I don’t know how to measure documentaries, mostly because I watch them while I’m doing other things. But this one was pretty decent. I don’t know, do you like sushi? Devoting your life to it seems kind of stupid—like, I get it, you are meticulous with your knife skills—but really, is it an art form that can consume a true genius over 60 years? I think probably not, but then again, I’m not Japanese.
3. The two dudes doing the Decathlon for the USA this year are fucking hot, and when Bruce Jenner came on the screen last night to introduce them, his face scared me so much I almost ran out of the room screaming.
4. I’m kind of into the South Korean athletes, is that weird? My Korean sisters are rooting for them over the USA, but they’re only 8 and 10, so they don’t know what they’re doing.
It seems kind of cool though, that such a small country can make such a big splash on the international arena.
5. Today, my little brother came to visit me in Brooklyn, which was really nice. My parents came last weekend, and they decided that even though I was living in sin, I wasn’t living in a den of iniquity. Since they gave their stamp of approval, both my brother and my sister have come to visit.
This probably wasn’t appropriate, given that Stuprendan is only 16, and lives in a house without tv, but we watched the Marina Abramovic documentary on HBO on demand, which features a lot of naked ladies. Then again, we spent the first twenty minutes of our time together discussing different ways to inject ketamine—which is a drug that one of our doctors is recommending to patients—so he’s not exactly innocent.
At first I was really into the documentary, because Marina herself is pretty awesome, but then it got all fawning over MoMA and Klaus Biesenbach, and I lost interest. I wanted more of Marina and her love story, and less glimpses of Michael Stipe in the background of B-roll. You should watch it only if you’re bored.
6. Cat Marnell is still getting a lot of publicity. She better relish in it, because her days are numbered. I can’t tell whether or not she’s a good writer—actually, I can, and she’s not anything special—but what I can say is that the problem with drug abuse is not that it damages your body, but rather that it’s super, duper boring. It’s just the same thing every fucking night.
And Cat Marnell is not an honest writer. She’s a regurgitator who offers no insight into her behavior. I don’t know, maybe that’s interesting to other people, but as someone who would be fascinated in the reasons why someone intelligent would smoke PCP, it doesn’t do anything for me.
7. On another note, Julieanne Smolinski is a great writer of the same generation and medium, and you should check her out. She makes me green with envy.
8. Although I seemed all about Olympic boxing today, the matches are actually super boring. Where’s the punching and knock-outs? I don’t understand.
Whelp. That’s my list. Darker than the inside of my closet, softer than towels or anuses. That was a pathetic attempt to sound like James Joyce. Good evening.
