26 January 2012

the three songs i’ve been listening to most this year

Posted by admin @ 21:28 pm    categories: Uncategorized

That title is a bit misleading because it may not be true. They’re up there, but… I’ve also, you know, been listening to a lot of Azealia Banks, a lot of random stuff. Going through “Best of 2011″ blogs. But this is still sort of true.

The world is moving along. My life is changing. But more of that at a later date. I wanted to post about the [proposed] changing diagnoses in the DSM V, which I’m not really qualified to comment on but am still interested in. Again, now is not the time—suffice to say that more than anything, the entire thing makes me wish that diagnosis wasn’t linked so closely to whether or not people can afford mental health care. That would’ve been the thesis (see: tl;dr) of my blog entry on the subject, in any event. Perhaps I’ll be inspired to write that at some point soon.

Music, as promised.

Zebra Katz – “Ima Read”.

I’d normally edit the spelling, but this is their own upload. This song is filled with cursing, and rather strange; it’s also musically really brilliant. The video is creepy, in a way I really quite enjoy. It’s really well-done, actually. Even though I got the song I still keep going back to the video. Also singing along to this in my head.


Astro – “Colombo”
One of the most excellent bands of last year, I say. This is the second single off of their album; a music video will come out pretty soon.


Radical Face – “Welcome Home, Son”
I’d never seen this video before right now. It’s just okay. Too much tilt-shift. The song, as above with Astro, is what I think of as the second single off of Radical Face’s album, Ghosts. It’s a gorgeous song.

18 December 2011

winter

Posted by admin @ 2:10 am    categories: mental states • the internet

Last night was the first night that I’m willing to qualify as proper Miami winter (yes, yes, the 21st is still a few days off), which is to say that driving home late at night with the windows down, in t-shirt and jeans, I felt a shiver or two from the breeze.

I hate not having real seasons, even though I also do appreciate some things about the temperate climate. But, well, I’ll enjoy what I get. Wear a sweater or two.

I’ve found myself really busy over the last few months, which makes things go more smoothly for me, I think. I have less to say on this forum because I’m saying it in others. I’m working, and exercising, and spending time with friends and family and romantic partner, and all of this together conspires to bleed me of the meagre stories I have, until I’m not sure what to write down here when I try to journal.

My life’s grown very comfortable, such that the excitement is minute and perhaps uninteresting. I haven’t been in the mood, I guess, to write about the wonderful meal I made, or ate; the adventure I went on this weekend. I suppose I’ve been unable to write fiction, or poetry even, as well. I think I’ve written six poems in the past six months, which in fact is an improvement upon the preceding year, but is by far a decrease from years before.

I don’t think I feel the drive less, exactly. It’s more of a motivation issue. Always in the past, there’s been some element of conclusion—a poem to submit to the review, or send to a friend; a story to submit to my workshop. Without any driving force, the ideas well up and then die down. That was what was so brilliant about LiveJournal and the other journalling platforms that were abounded in the early/mid 2000s: your friends provided support, encouragement. Just having twenty “friends” on xanga or LiveJournal meant that you could imagine that there were twenty people awaiting your next update.

Tumblr provides that as well, but I think in an age where facebook already records the minutiae of your life, tumblr and the blogging platforms that remain have veered away from self-observation and towards more specific blogs. (The primary exception to this seems to be travelogs.) How many people still write blogs about their lives? Facebook is already recording your life as you live it. (And now, with the new timeline feature, you can go back and browse through the past. It’s a strange concept that I’m sure better essayists than I will cover.)

When I was perhaps a senior in high school, I set about writing a mini-autobiography, chronicling the stories of myself. When I first heard about the timeline idea, I thought of it as an opportunity for everyone to do that, to write an autobiography. I’m curious to see what people will do with it, to see who will create a false identity, who invent a past. Who will be the first artist to publish a character on facebook, whose story we can read? When we can detail our lives with images and video and interactions, map our paths and locate each moment in time, is a personal journal of interest?

As it is, I’ve veered very much towards anecdote-tinged essay on this forum in recent time, coupled with travelog and interjections of films. My earliest journal posts on the web are almost postmodern in style, spastic and jumbled. These days, I use paragraphs.

I don’t know where we’re going, this space and I. I’m sure I’ll keep writing. I hope the subjects continue to blossom.

26 November 2011

movies. books.

Posted by admin @ 22:25 pm    categories: children's and YA literature • film/movies

Movies since the last time I wrote about them. Then some books.

Jesus Camp, 2006, dir. Rachel Grady & Heidi Ewing
Watched this with Ian. Fascinating. Well-made. Pretty even-handed. I enjoyed it quite a lot.

Ides of March, 2011, dir. George Clooney
Saw this with Blake. I keep forgetting what this is called, but I remember the film pretty well—George Clooney and Ryan Gosling do a very good job adapting Farragut North, a play, into a film. At least, it’s appropriately demoralizing and fascinating. I liked it. Great acting, a good script. A bit confusing in terms of motivations, but I felt pretty much like they knew what they were doing.

También la Lluvia (Even the Rain), 2010, dir. Icíar Bollaín
I’m glad I finally saw this. Gael García Bernal is awesome (as usual, I suppose). The plot is really well-crafted. There’s perhaps a mite too much melodrama, but in general I think the acting is good, the ideas moving, and the result well worth watching. Also it’s nice to watch movies in Spanish.

El Bulli: Cooking in Progress, 2011, dir. Gereon Wetzel
Not in Spanish, despite being about a Spanish restaurant—but it’s (a) made by German filmmakers/documentarians and (b) about a Catalan restaurant more explicitly, which is to say predominately in Catalan. I like food; I liked this movie about food. It is strictly documenting a year in the “life” of this restaurant and its chef, Ferran Adrià. I enjoyed it, although it was pretty slow. Worth seeing if you like food/cooking/molecular gastronomy/creativity. Saw this with Justin and his friend Galen.

Jane Eyre, 2011, dir. Cary Joji Fukunaga
Jamie Bell is in this. Isn’t that weird? Jason tried to convince me to go see it months ago when it came out, and I was interested from then on; I finally watched it. I’d never seen any adaptation, or read the book, which was nice. This was a good introduction. I’m curious about the book now. A dark, brooding, gothic interpretation of the story.

La piel que habito (The Skin I Live In), 2011, dir. Pedro Almodóvar
Saw this in theatres in D.C., with Ian. I like Almodóvar films. I liked this one. It was a bit less silly than his older movies (although I guess the same could be said for Volver). It’s about a plastic surgeon (Antonio Banderas, back with Almodóvar) who’s created a burn-resistant skin and is testing it on a captive. That’s all I’ll say. Watch the trailer. I think it’s worthwhile. Creepy. Very creepy. Predictable, but predictably good and intense.

We Need to Talk About Kevin, 2011, dir. Lynne Ramsay
I just saw this one yesterday with Jason and his friend Sean. (Thanks, J.) Tilda Swinton is one of my favorite actresses, and she’s amazing in this, as usual. She’s on-screen most of the time, as we weave through time to learn about the events preceding, during, and after a violent act by her son that leads to his imprisonment and her, well, downfall. It was well-shot, although sometimes a bit confusing in a way that I didn’t think was useful. Still, a really moving film.

Melancholia, 2011, dir. Lars von Trier
And this one I saw today, with my parents. It wasn’t as depressing as I was expecting, or as the above film. Still sad, though. Beautifully, beautifully-shot. Great acting from Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg, and everyone else actually. I had some problems with it (what was the point of the kid?!), but I liked the movie in general. It’s a bit slow (since it’s Dunst, I thought of Marie Antoinette a few times), but there is some action, and I kind of liked the way it was split into two fairly distinct stories. I interpreted it loosely as an “internal” depression and an “external” one, although I don’t mean that as a reading of the film. I think it’s one to think about.

Books.

I’ve been reading some, although nothing that I meant to. I finally read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson), and I suppose I’ll read the sequels, too, since I got through it so quickly. It was fun, although there were plenty of things that pissed me off / bored me / didn’t make sense stylistically. I thought once or twice of this piece in the New Yorker.

I also read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, in just one night actually. (I’ve been reading Infinite Jest for over a year, Los Detectives Salvajes for four months, and The Magic Toyshop for two weeks, and I pick up this book and plow through it in a night? Dammit.) It’s not quite YA, but it almost qualifies, at least by virtue of its character’s age. It’s sort of a mix of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, and maybe a few similar books. Mostly it’s the Stephenson, although I’ll grant him that Stephenson (and, probably, Gibson’s Neuromancer, probably; I never managed to start that, although I know I should) is more the starting point than the plot he follows. The plot is relatively distinct, and pretty clever/silly/both.

I was thinking this—including the bit about Grossman—and then I was at the Miami Book Fair and saw Grossman speak, which was fun (I like the guy). I need to get The Magicians and The Magician King from the library and re-read the first and read the second. I shall be on that!

The Book Fair was nice, but I’m done writing and going to publish this. Yep.

17 October 2011

the internet

Posted by admin @ 21:39 pm    categories: the internet

I have a category on this blog called the internet, which I’ve actually used less often than I would’ve thought—probably because it doesn’t occur to me. The intention of it was to highlight things that are totally focused on the internet, or things that came from my haphazard browsing.

Anyway, today I decided to make a completely incomplete list, to which I am giving the lukewarm title of “Things that I like on the internet and think you should have seen, too.” Some of these things are older, and I kind of assume that everyone of my generation knows them. Others may be more recent. Most are videos or websites. Many are pre-youtube (woah!), although some of them now live there. Some will be vulgar; others entirely PC. I’m not necessarily going with the super-super famous— no Bed Intruder or Charlie bit me here. No cat videos, either, I don’t think. In any event. I present:

Things that I like on the internet and think you should have seen, too

I’m missing a bunch that I may add later. For the moment, though. Enjoy.

I invite commenters to add their own. Yessir.

Additions as I remember them:

2 October 2011

only eight films in three months

Posted by admin @ 17:15 pm    categories: film/movies

I haven’t watched too many films recently. Here are the eight I watched since the last time I posted in this category.

Beginners, 2010, dir. Mike Mills
I really enjoyed this, when I saw it at the Coral Gables Cinemateque1. Christopher Plummer plays Ewan McGregor’s father, who comes out as gay as an older man after his wife passes away, dates a much younger man, and then passes away; we watch McGregor’s character deal with the death of his father and interact with the really stupendous Mélanie Laurent2, with whom he begins a relationship. It wasn’t a perfect movie, but it was very amusing, and sweet, and dealt with many difficult subjects well. Recommended.

Gasland, 2010, dir. Josh Fox
A documentary about hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) and the US natural gas industry. Really depressing because on the one hand, natural gas is a great resource, while on the other hand, the means we’re using to get it out are damaging the earth and people’s lives. This is where those videos of people lighting their tap water on fire are from. It is one of the only reasons I am glad that I have an electric range at home. Worth watching if you don’t know much about fracking.

Los Amantes del Círculo Polar (Lovers of the Arctice Circle), 1998, dir. Julio Médem
One of my favorite movies ever. Watched it this time without subtitles, which was fun. (Although I watched this and the movie below while I was sick, which was not fun.) Médem also directed Lucía y el Sexo (Sex and Lucia), which is also a good film. This movie is sweet and sad and technically very clever; it’s also sexy and has a good plot. Otto and Ana become interested in each other as children; their parents, divorced from other spouses, end up marrying each other. And I think I’ll leave the description there. The film is mostly just a drama, but it’s intriguing, I think. I first watched this movie in a class, where we watched a number of really good international films. This one wins out, though. Oh yeah.

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 1971, dir. Mel Stuart
A classic! Although I like the newer version as well, this one’s the best. Another movie I own; another fun watch while I was sick.

Freakonomics, 2010, dir. Ewing, Gibney, Gordon, Grady, Jarecki, & Spurlock
A documentary based in part on the book. I never really wanted to read the book, but I find the ideas interesting. My mother and I were looking for something streaming to watch and happened upon this one. I had fun watching it, but don’t really remember much of it.

L’Illusionniste (The Illusionist), 2010, dir. Sylvain Chomet
I talked about wanting to see this on Halloween, almost a year ago; I didn’t like it quite as much as I hoped I would. It was, as I text-messaged a friend in Philadelphia while watching it, quite dispiriting: “Damn the French make sad animated films,” I sent him. It’s made by the same people who made The Triplets of Belleville, which I quite liked; it’s quiet and sad and not very uplifting at all. I don’t know if I recommend it, but I also didn’t dislike it. I just think there are other things I’d rather see.

Persona, 1966, dir. Ingmar Bergman
I saw this with my sister, on a rainy Sunday while visiting her in New York. She convinced me to see this over several other options. I think I’d only seen one other Bergman film3, and I was glad to see another. I like him, when I’m willing to invest some time and patience in a film. This is considered a classic, and one of his best films. It was haunting and kind of bizarre, and manages to be weird without being particularly silly. It didn’t hold my attention perfectly, but at the same time it’s the sort of film I’d like to watch again, and think about some more. One that requires a bit of work, but might be worth it. I don’t watch that kind of film often, but it’s nice on occasion.

Balada triste de trompeta (The Last Circus), 2010, dir. Álex de la Iglesia
This movie was pretty ridiculous. I saw it last Sunday, and spent the entire drive home from the theatre (the awesome O Cinema) trying to decide if I liked it. My friend Justin, with whom I saw it, concluded that he did; I guess I have to as well. It’s about, errr, a clown in a circus who goes insane? I guess. It’s really bizarre, and you have to spend a lot of time suspending your disbelief—but they do a good job of stretching the conceit (clowns gone mad; violent men dressed as clowns) a lot further than you’d imagine. I don’t know that I’d recommend it, exactly. It’s a bunch of g’s: gruesome and graphic and grotesque. But if you watch the trailer and think, “oh man!, this looks ridiculous and fun!,” which is what I thought, then maybe you’ll like it as well.

  1. They insist on misspelling the word “cinematheque,” although I don’t know why. Otherwise, they’re great; Miami has been lucky in the past year to suddenly gain two new art cinemas—this and O Cinema, in Wynwood—and have the Miami Beach Cinematheque re-open. [↩]
  2. She played the awesomely mad French woman in Inglourious Basterds. [↩]
  3. The Seventh Seal [↩]

1 October 2011

musically

Posted by admin @ 22:25 pm    categories: Miami • music

I’ve been failing to do quite a few things recently, which I won’t get into here, or not right now. What I have been doing is listening to a fair lot of music. I’ve posted about some songs I like—there’s actually a category for music posts—and I’m sure I’ll keep doing so.

First, I wanted to mention this vaguely-bizarre musician I heard of a few days ago, Cosmo Jarvis, whose videos for his songs “Gay Pirates” and “My Day” are actually pretty fun. I think I might even like the music. I guess I’m just amused enough to note this down? (Also I find it weird that normal musicians are now sometimes younger than me.)

Last night, I went to see a show at Miami’s Grand Central, a relatively new club/performance space that I rather like. The bands performing were Cut Copy, an Australian electronic band, and openers Washed Out and Midnight Magic.

I’d only heard Midnight Magic once before, but I quite enjoyed them; they describe themselves as “funk, disco, electro and soul,” which I guess I get. Here: take a listen to a remix of one of their songs I liked best. Anyway, the singer was charismatic; I was in a corner of the crowd that felt like dancing, and so I danced. It was fun!

Washed Out came sandwiched in the middle. Washed Out is Ernest Greene, but live it was him with a backup band (see below for Greene and three of the four). I wasn’t sure how they’d sound live—listen to this song, one of their best, to see why—but the music worked to dance to, and I was in the mood I guess; they also, sort of unexpectedly for so-called “chill-wave” music, had a bit of a stage presence. I think I liked them best of the night, which I guess I expected to.

Cut Copy (see picture at top) were the main band, and they were a lot of fun. The singer is enthusiastic and feels comfortable on the stage, and seemed happy to be there. I guess all in all there wasn’t anything remarkable about their set, or even their music, but I was glad to be there. I left early, at not-quite-2:00, but I was super-glad I went.

I went last week to a concert as well, to see the Swedish band Peter, Bjorn and John, who have that song “Young Folks” that you know you know. They were great; I surprised myself with how well I knew their music. The opener, Dinosaur Feathers, were great too; I really love their song “History Lessons”. I think you should watch that video.

19 September 2011

awesome awesome awesome

Posted by admin @ 20:11 pm    categories: Argentina • music

So I have recently become vaguely obsessed with this Argentine group called Alvy, Nacho, y Rubin Interpretan a Los Campos Magnéticos. Above is one of my favorite songs of theirs.

As you may note, this is a cover of a Magnetic Fields song, which after all is what they do—re-interpret, in Spanish, Magnetic Fields songs.

Which is awesome.

I was going to say more, but that might be enough. Another day.

Pues, reciente empecé a estar un poco obsesionado con un grupo argentino que se llama Alvy, Nacho, y Rubin Interpretan a Los Campos Magnéticos. Arriba está una de las pistas de ellos que más me gusta.

Como quizás puedes darse cuenta, esto es una versión de una canción de The Magnetic Fields, el grupo americano. Eso, después de todo, es lo que hacen—re-interpretan, en castellano, las canciones de The Magnetic Fields.

Que está alucinante.

Intenté decir más, pero eso puede ser bastante. Otro día.

28 August 2011

should be

Posted by admin @ 22:31 pm    categories: Uncategorized

I should be writing more poetry.
I should be more organized.

Todo lo demás viene después. Estoy bastante contento con como está la vida.

21 August 2011

gelato

Posted by admin @ 21:06 pm    categories: Food • images

I made chocolate-hazelnut gelato tonight. Gianduja. It came out pretty damn well. By which I mean, it’s gelato. Unmistakably so.

18 August 2011

the ongoing saga of poor justin

Posted by admin @ 23:13 pm    categories: physicality

Almost a year ago, I hurt my back.

More specifically, I hurt my lower back. Lumbar spine. There’s pain hovering around pretty much the entire lumbar area, moving down; I also sometimes feel pain around both piriformis muscles, around my exterior hips where the tensor fasciae latae connect to the iliac crest, and into the hip adductor1 muscles and the quadriceps/thigh. This pain is not always present, and when it is present it’s not always in all of these regions. But it’s never gone away for more than a few days.

I don’t know how I hurt my back. I don’t know if it really matters how. It’s possible that I yanked it when I fell while climbing. It’s possible that I pulled it at a yoga class, or that I overstretched one set of muscles and under-stretched another. There’s also been the suggestion that apparently sitting at work all day isn’t so good for you. (Of course it’s not. But while it may be a factor, it’s probably not when it first started hurting. I’m of the mind that it was probably a fall from climbing, combined with other things, that set it off.)

I try not to think about it too much, and I don’t actually talk about it all that often, except for when I’m in rather more pain. Fortunately, that isn’t all too often. But it has been just about a year (I date the beginning as the end of August, 2010), and things aren’t fixed. So if we talk regularly, you’ve doubtless heard mention of this by now.

Immediately I should assure you, o reader of this blog, that I have seen plenty of doctors. One general practitioner, four physical therapists, one chiropractor, one rheumatologist, one neurologist, one pain specialist. I’ve had an MRI (inconclusive). Things that have been ruled out: this is not a nerve problem (I don’t have sciatica, numbness, or sharp pains), and it’s not caused by the piriformis even if there’s pain there (again, no sciatica or pinched nerve reactions). It’s probably not caused by a spinal disc herniation. It’s probably not based on how I sleep (although no one has come to watch me sleep), or on the shoes I wear. And so on.

Nonetheless, the problems are manifold:

  1. We, meaning humans, don’t really understand back pain. The general feeling is that the body probably isn’t meant to be sitting for as much time as we sit, and so since it’s such a complex process to keep the back connected with the body (those muscles I named up in the beginning are only a few of the ones that connect in the lower back area), of course things are going to go wrong reasonably often. But how do you figure out what is causing the “wrong”?
  2. I’m very flexible in some places, but relatively inflexible in others. I did gymnastics as a kid, but then I didn’t do anything other than runner’s stretches until I got into yoga at 16 or so. I’ve also regularly sat oddly, or so I think. There was a point where I thought that normal cross-legged sitting involved one foot over the knee2, and so my hips open very easily in some ways, but are very tight in others. I can stand and bend to touch my toes and, with straight legs, slide my entire hands under my feet—but it’s all coming from a super-flexible back, and not from my legs.
  3. For years, I used to occasionally lie down at night and feel some slight lower back discomfort. I can only assume that’s because I have, for years, been standing and/or sitting in ways that pulled on the muscles.
  4. According to the physical therapist I’ve seen for the past eight months or so, my back muscles are relatively weak. I need to be engaging my lower abdominal muscles, including the psoas (coolest name ever), and using them and my back to hold myself erect. But somehow they’re not as strong as they should be, or not as strong as my leg muscles which are fighting with them.

That’s the problem, at least according to the prevailing theory right now: my back problems come from a combination of weak back muscles and overly-tight leg muscles. The tight leg muscles connect to the back muscles, pulling my back out of shape and causing it to arch when I stand, and curve when I sit. At the very least, it’s a pretty comprehensible theory.

If it’s the leg muscles that are too-tight, then the question is: which ones? My hamstrings are really tight, but so are the hip adductors and the quadriceps; so is the ilio-tibial band, which runs from the ilium (hipbone) to the tibia (calf-bone), and connects with a number of muscles. Will stretching these muscles/tissues result eventually in a reduced problem? I hope so. But it’s not as though we’re sure.

An example of how this is complicated: it was only recently that, upon a renewed complaint on my part, the physical therapist pressed on the bands of muscles and tendons that form the hip adductors, and noticed how tight they were, how much pain the pressure caused me. You can’t discover this stuff from an MRI. I wish you could.

I feel pretty confident that eventually things will calm down, and I’ll be able to work without feeling back pain. I’ve actually learned a lot about muscle connections through this, and about back pain in general; my posture has improved, and I think my yoga practice has as well. I just wish that “eventually” were now. When I was living in Madrid, I learned that eventualmente meant that something were possible. “Eventualmente, este dolor desaparecerá” is more “Maybe this pain will disappear” then the supposition that it in fact will do so, as is contained in the English phrasing. I’ll go with the English concept. Sooner or later.

P.S. I should probably put some pictures up here, huh?

  1. I did not know this—apparently an adductor is the muscle that brings your limb in towards the center of the body; the abductor (note the consonant change) brings that same limb away from the center. The hip adductors are part of the muscles known as the hip flexors, which in general are pretty tight for me. But more on this in a moment. [↩]
  2. In yoga, this would be called ardha padmasana—half lotus. [↩]
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This is the online journal of Justin Dainer-Best, detailing my adventures. To the right are links to other parts of the site.

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