Forty-three days until the beginning of Spring, we are ready to say goodbye to bad colds and high gas bills, aching bones and gray mornings. As Winter plays its last notes like water on metal…
… The Sun is barely warmer than the Moon.
Naked branches without color…
Damp earth holds on to bird tracks for warmth…
Yet, already the ice has begun to crack.
Give us a few months of color before we welcome Winter back, only to curse again.
There are things they hide from us, or at least do when we’re not looking. They have secrets, which some people hate, but when you finally get to shed light on a cat mystery, the satisfaction is second to none.
Item one: the tufts of white hair we found lying about were Tito’s. I know this because one morning in the last few days, I opened my eyes to see Jenny pin Tito down Greco-Roman wrestling style with a lock and a throw. Tito tried getting up, but his attempt ended up with him hitting the ground again. In between throws, Jenny turned nervously towards the bed to see whether I witnessed anything, her head surrounded by fluttering tufts off Tito’s back.
The second mystery, while not quite amounting to one, was how could half pound potatoes find their way across our kitchen floor?!?
We still haven’t caught her doing it, But Jenny has precedents with smaller taters, and can be seen here practicing the wide-open jaw-lock necessary to “lug a spud”…
What it is with her and potatoes we have no clue. But she sure does like bringing them to bed…
Most San Francisco visitors I encounter seem eager to run through certain areas of the City, just so they can snap a few pictures here and there, before returning to their hotel satisfied they’ve pretty much seen it all… Fools.
It is like this:
The photos below were taken at tremendous risk, hence the shaky quality of some shots, but one does not simply tangle with raccooneers and expect to hightail it fully intact.
For those few who understand there’s more to the park than meets the cursory glance, I say go to the Conservatory of Flowers, Bison paddock or Stow Lake, all those storied places worth hours if not days of exploration, “but I do warn ye, if ye value yer life: ye stay well clear o’ North Lake. Place be full o’ monsters with ’em little teeth”.
We ain’t – I mean we’re not talking about cute Strawberry Hill over in Stow Lake with them owls and their neighbors, the blue herons. No.
I’m talking about that gloomy islet, New Barbary Coast, where Charlotte Raccoon (née Badger) and the others, like the Harpes, scourge of squirrels and raiders of birds’ nests, ply their trade from dusk ’til dawn…
One last word of warning: don’t feed the raccooneers, they’re turning into fat b****s… This ain’t no Disney movie.
“Beyond the black rainbow” – (110 minutes, Canada, 2010 -NR)
How this film came to be is very easy to imagine, as described by the writer/director: a typical awkward teenager browsing video stores in the ’80s, staring at video jackets of R-rated films his parents won’t allow him to watch, conjuring visions of what the movies are like.
‘Struth… But what makes it a little more unusual is that the kid’s father was George P. Cosmatos (1941-2005), who directed some popular movies in America and abroad, such as “the Cassandra crossing“, “Rambo II” and “Tombstone“. There isn’t much to find online about either father or son, and the elder Cosmatos’ decision to move his family to Victoria, British Columbia, reflects a strong desire for privacy and normalcy well away from Hollywood.
[…]1983. Dr. Barry Niles (Michael Rogers) runs the Arboria institute, created by his mentor Mercurio Arboria (Scott Nylands).
Dedicated to the development of human potential through technology and experimental medication, the facility houses a young girl named Elena (Eva Allan) with telepathic powers reined in by drugs and electronic voodoo in the form of a pulsating pyramid…
This is about as much of the story behind “beyond the black rainbow” which I’m willing to tell, because going further would only be laying out my own interpretation of a very personal film. “Circumstantial evidence is a very tricky thing. It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different.” – Sherlock Holmes in “The Boscomb Valley mystery”.
Although “beyond the black rainbow” is very interesting visually, some would argue it isn’t anything particularly new. When I first saw the film’s trailer, I wondered: is that an early De Palma I missed? The stark decors with deep shadows and bright blue or red light, the mirrored surfaces and characters’ look…
But “beyond the black rainbow” is not imitation it is reflection, Pan Cosmatos’ imagined version of what 1980’s films were like, and an attempt at coming to terms with the loss of his parents. I suspect that a viewer’s take on the film will be very personal: much of what happens on screen, as well as the back story, is ‘hinted’ at.
Watching “beyond the black rainbow” is an experience of sorts, the combination of sharp visuals, slow pace and tonalities made me feel as though I was in some altered state. The unfortunate result being that I fell asleep twice trying to finish the film.
This in itself makes it somewhat difficult to recommend the film: it certainly doesn’t fit the usual “midnight movie madness” mold of entertaining weirdness. It does however has an appeal shared by “the Lathe of Heaven” (the 1980 version), and “altered states“, exploring themes which are not readily translatable to the screen.
I want also to single out the performance by Michael Rogers as Dr. Barry Niles, whose strange, androgynous appearance becomes clear in the last few minutes of the film. His interpretation of a brilliant mind pulled between different realities, with muted lassitude, disgust and rage was subtle and fearsome at once.
“Beyond the black rainbow” gets four jellybeans.
Since I work at a major tourist destination on San Francisco’s waterfront, we fairly often get calls for missing children. For the most part these are younger children who got separated from their parents in crowds.
There are many people about, many distractions both visual and aural which contribute to quickly disorienting both child and parent. In the vast majority of cases, we reunite them within minutes (7 to 9 on average). My intent here is to point out a couple of things which can help first responders greatly: with digital media readily available, whether you use a camera or have one on your cell phone, take a picture of your child (or children) before venturing in crowded venues. From head to toe.
Secondly, if you have to provide a description of what the child is wearing (mothers are much better at this than dads), describing footwear is paramount. In the (hopefully) unlikely event that the child was grabbed either by an estranged parent or a predator, we will focus on what shoes children are wearing as we scan crowds: if the abductor planned to switch the child’s clothing, due largely to time constraints, he/she will not remove the shoes.
Shoes and hair color. When minutes count, this is the bare minimum.
My first Caturday in quite a while is dedicated to Miss Jenny, the fabulous kittoon… I’ve not been able to sit and type about our pointy eared folk since Mazuzu passed, partly because the whole experience was so puzzling, like some sort of s****y real life cliffhanger.
There was the possibility that Jenny introduced the virus which ultimately took over Maz after we adopted her. We don’t know and never will since there is no test for FIP. Rudha-an read up on this more than I and it may be that this disease may be a growing threat, affecting many more pets. At this point my understanding of it is largely empirical and will require a lot more reading. Be that as it may, both Jenny and Tito have been coming out of their shells ever so slowly these past few months.
Tito now spends time on our bed, sometimes under covers when he’s not playing with Jenny. He coos and trills happily, greets me home from work with a game of ‘fetch’ and is generally more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. As to Jenny, she likes to rove around on the bed, once in a while stopping by to nibble an eyebrow, lick my skull or lightly ‘bite’ it while purring up a storm.
And still, despite better diet, she’ll ‘grace’ me with a fart, in her completely innocent, matter-of-fact way. Her way of putting a spell on us is to fart in our general direction…
The evil of Farther Christmas has been unleashed upon the world once more. Can a small group of reindeer herders catch him in time to sell it to the Americans?
“Rare exports: a Christmas tale” – (2010, Finland, 84 minutes – rated R)
Like all industries, Christmas is made up of many businesses, the more unsavory and dangerous ones, the more “interesting” the folklore.
While NORAD pretends to track Santa’s sleigh every year, the real hunting takes place on the frozen ground of Northern Finland, Lapland to be exact. There, rough men practice skills honed over generations, working in groups of three: the tracker, the marker and the sniper. Their quarry is the Wild Father Christmas, an elusive and savage predator pouncing on reindeer and naughty children alike. The following video is NSFW:
In “Rare exports: a Christmas tale“, Mount Kurvatunturi, the site where Father Christmas was entombed is being “excavated” with explosives by an American company, Unwittingly, they unleash the ancient evil. It is now up to local reindeer herders and father and son Rauno and Pietari Kontio (Jorma and Onni Tommila) to capture the beast and sell it to the Americans.
based on the 2003 short “Rare Exports, Inc.” posted above, “Rare Exports: a Christmas tale” is another highly enjoyable example of dry, dead-pan Nordic humor, in the vein of “Trollhunter” or “the sound of noise“. Monty Python lives… And…
… Father Christmas is out there, ravenous, nasty and lethal. Until the tame final product, result of hard work and hours of beatings, is fit for shipment around the world. “Rare exports: a Christmas tale” is where it begins…
“Rare Exports: a Christmas tale” gets five jellybeans. They should show this in schools.
“The sound of noise” – (102 minutes, Sweden/France, 2010 – rated R)
Drummers Magnus (Magnus Borjeson) and his pal Sanna (Sanna Persson) are speeding along Swedish freeways in a van, when Sanna’s rythmic (erratic?) driving prompts a motorcycle cop to give chase, which all ends up looking like a terrorist plot after the crashed van is found at the German embassy’s gates and the tick-tock of the metronome on the dash sounds like a bomb to the cops.
Crazy?
Continue reading “Midnight Movie Madness : “the sound of noise””
Counting down to Halloween on this gloomy Tuesday morning, let’s stroll through Autumn, Ray Bradbury’s country.
I hope you’ll enjoy these photos as I do, taken between the beaches of San Francisco, Golden Gate Park and the Shoreline at Mountain View, CA.
“That country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain.”
― Ray Bradbury, The October Country
Continue reading “Moody Tuesday: silver skies and grey waters”
Not that the pointy eared ones really care, but today’s post is about belated birthday wishes for them. If it wasn’t for the fact that they sleep, oh say about 17 hours each day, their parkour play moves and Klingon-style luvvin’ would make you think they’re burning the candle at both ends.
Our wish is for them to meow long and loud and for many years to come. Happy birthday, you little @$#%*&#!
In fact, if they were human, I think they might be Swedish percussionists running from the Law in the JBoDmobile (more on that later)…
“What greater gift than the love of a cat?”
– Charles Dickens
