Sooooo not in this class anymore.

Sooooo happy.

Sooooo not gonna lose sleep over it anymore.

In 1999, the film was deemed “culturally significant” by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
-from the Wikipedia entry on Do The Right Thing.

WELL OBVIOUSLY, U.S. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.

I think that Wikipedia quote there sums up my feelings towards the movie. It is culturally significant. If a big name director is writing about racial conflict in a believable, relatively unbiased way, of course it’s gonna be significant.
In a way, it made me nostalgic for the summers of my youth in California and Pennsylvania where it was too hot to be inside or outside and everyone was just hangin’ out on their porches.
It’s unsurprising that all the heat in Bed-Stuy caused a riot. I wonder if the same events would’ve taken place if the movie wasn’t set on the hottest day of the year.
Spike Lee is hardcore. He wrote, directed, produced and starred in the movie. How often do people do allll that for a non-indie movie? I don’t feel like there are many multi-taskers [to that extent] out there, making successful movies. So yeah, wow, great job, Mr. Lee.

Do The Right Thing is believable and stylish and makes a point. Actully, on second thought, I think it makes quite a few points. Race will always be an issue. It’ll always be hard to really believe in your police force. And, of course, doing the right thing is always important.

They’re talking about the origin of the band name.

According to Urban Dictionary: Joy Division 

1. A great band.
2. What the Nazis called female prisoners who were kept alive to be prostitutes for the German army.

I love the way people with English accents say ‘nazis’. They pronounce the ‘a’s more, so it sounds like “gnat-sees”. 

Also, the casting director for ‘24 Hour Party People’ sucks though I love Tony Wilson. 

/rant on the Manchester music scene in the late 1970s. 

“For him she planned sugar in his motor, scissors to his tie, burned suits, slashed shoes, ripped socks. Vicious, childish acts of violence to inconvenience him, remind him.”

Alice’s revenge is the kind of revenge you have upon someone you really love. Of course you don’t kill them. That’d be counterproductive. There’s little suffering in killing. But to constantly remind them of their wrong-doing – that’s how someone really suffers.  To find ways to let them know every day, multiple times a day, just how bothered you’ve become by whatever wrong they committed.
It’s dramatic and it is childish and it will frustrate whoever you’d do it to, but they’re the ones with the ripped socks and every time their toes poke through the hole and hit the inside of their shoe, they’ll be thinking of you. 

Yay!

“Suffering Under THE DEATH RAY!”

What is hot chocolate even made of?
cookies daisies
Ian Curtis’s ashes
Creamsicles apples
tree bark
cat’s meow
sour drainpipes
for the zombie pigeon
or Wonderbread
in a blender
with Mickey Mouse
or Rita Hayworth
or cicadia on fire?
some sand from
the attic
some pink dirt
hear it in your ear
Florida to Chicago
some night
with David Bowie driving
the car
drinking absinthe the colour
of Jupiter (a wrong colour)
a February goose kind of colour
(from Colorado, you know?)
yet failing anyway, mostly in Latin,
behind the mask of sleep
(it’s cloudy; why not?)
as I meet the girl at the gate and
return her there,
her gaze like Antarctica — the Atlantic ocean
why is epilepsy so hard to treat for some?

02.20.08

living in the sunlight / loving in the moonlight / having a wonderful time…-”Living In The Sunlight, Loving In the Moonlight”, Tiny Tim. 

At most times, I find him rambling. He’ll bring up an interesting idea and then just keep talking. There’s no time for thinking about things. I figure that’s a lot like how the whole tour bus thing works. Look here. Now look here.  No real thoughts.Interesting idea: Visual rambling vs verbal rambling. 

So I can talk about ANYTHING I WANT, AHHHH, SUCH CREATIVE FREEDOM! 

I’ve had too much sugar.

 I watched Control today with Shannon.

That movie fuckin’ kills me, every time. I cannot imagine how frustrated Ian must’ve been to feel like hanging himself was the only way to resolve his problems.

And at the same time, I don’t see how those closest to him couldn’t see it coming. A month before his suicide, he tried to overdose on his epilepsy medication after a night of drinking. He staggered into his bedroom, collapsed, and his wife called the hospital and he got his stomach pumped.

Plus, well. You could see it coming just by reading his lyrics. Don’t get me wrong; I’m the last person to say “Oh no, look at what so-and-so’s writing, they must need help.” But really, how could those closest to him not see what was happening? They all knew he was on a bunch of different pills for epilepsy, the pills weren’t working and were causing depression, his wife was filing for divorce, his affair with a Belgian journalist [the reason for the divorce] was falling apart, plus the guilt of said affair and the guilt of knowing that after the divorce, his [ex] wife would likely have to take care of their infant daughter on her own.

And then, taking all that into consideration, there were his lyrics. Maybe it’s only obvious in retrospect, but they seems to give off a big vibe of “I’m not okay and won’t be.” And I feel bad about it. Ian Curtis was intensely talented and some things in his life were beyond his control. When he had seizures onstage, he’d end up having to be carried off and would end up crying in a back room. Maybe if there had been better medication to treat his epilepsy, he’d still be around. However, that’s mostly hopeful. 

Ian Curtis
1956 – 1980
 

but if you could just see the beauty / these things I could never describe / these pleasures of wayward distraction / this is my one lucky prize...

-”Isolation”, Joy Division. 

              I don’t exactly identify with Schulman’s New York, but I wish I did. The other narraratives seem to view New York as something great and spectacular that exists around them; something they do not exactly interact with so much as observe. Schulman views New York as exactly with it is, whatever that may be, accepting it and living with it, developing her own method of working within it.

       In reality, I think I identified with Kazin’s view of New York, namely the following quote: “…I could look straight across to the skyscrapers of Manhattan, I saw New York as a foreign city.” It’s so easy to see New York as a foreign city. I’ve never seen anything like it. At the same time, it’s completely familiar. The trick is to not see it as a whole but to see it as a kind of puzzle. Seeing New York as a solitary mass makes it overwhelming.

       Besides that, I liked the way White mentioned events and where they took place, not by giving the address of the event, but relating it in blocks to how far it happened from where he is/was currently located. It both lends to the myth of New York of this greatly eventful place as well as related to it in a human way; this is where things happen, beautiful things as well as not so attractive.

       Didion’s New York seemed so distant, but at the same time understandable. I’ve also had days where I didn’t want to leave the comfort of my safe, secure bed to go out and see people and places I didn’t care for seeing. Abbey’s idea of New York seems to also include New Jersey and I don’t stand for any of that. New Jersey is not New York. New Jersey is a giant highway that leads me to New York. I’m not sure how I feel about Abbey’s passage.

you’ll see the horrors of a faraway place / meet the architects of law face to face / see mass murder on a scale you’ve never seen / and all the ones who try hard to succeed…
-”Atrocity Exhibition”, Joy Division. 
 
Home is a place to play my vinyl albums and make snarky jokes about reality TV stars.
It has a bed and sometimes cookies. And always pillows. Pillows are a necessary kind of thing.
There’s cigarettes with the option of coffee.
There’s a wall to hang my My Little Pony Christmas stocking on.
Eyeliner and boots and books. Musicals. I don’t believe in using desks for their intended purpose.  
It doesn’t need to stay still. Home is not the building but its contents and residents. There doesn’t need to be any obvious common factor.
It has an outlet so I can charge my phone. Connection to the outer world is critical.
Home is never silent. Silence seems empty.
New York is home right now. More, it contains home; the immediate surroundings being an added bonus. People and noise, the bus that stops under my window at all times, the trees and buildings I can see. The playground across the street that no one seems to go to. There aren’t any swings there so I can’t say the playground is unloved for no reason. Swings are essential to success.

I need to get a course packet before I write anything more. Tomorrow, after lunch, will be a good time for that. I have the feeling I’m going to abuse this journal a great deal and write about pointless things quite often between class assignments.

Time to turn the record over.