What do you get when you combine the terrain of table tennis with the head-skill of soccer? Headis.
Everything is Alive is an unscripted interview show / podcast in which all the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells us its life story--and everything it says is true." There have been three episodes so far: 1. Louis, can of soda; 2. Maeve, lamppost; 3. Dennis, pillow. They're not "sequential," but I do suggest listening to them in order.
I pitched them on participating as on a particular vinyl record, but I never heard back.
Everything is Alive
Everything is Alive is an unscripted interview show in which all the subjects are inanimate objects. In each episode, a different thing tells us its life story--and everything it says is true.
Land of the Strays is a short documentary about Lya Battle and her dog sanctuary in Costa Rica. Outside published an article about Battle a few years back.
Over the years I've lived in a few countries with significant stray dog populations: Cuba (1 month); The Dominican (2 months); Spain (3 months); Vanuatu (5 months).
In Playa Oliva, Spain, many homes had guard dogs which lived outside on fenced properties. At night, packs of wild dogs would hunt rabbit, cat, or whatever they could find. They'd spook the guard dogs, sending them into a frenzy, which was answered in kind by the pack until you had a cacophony of vicious barking that would last what felt like hours while you were trying to sleep.
I'd been hired to look after Blanche the cat, who was indoors with me, and I remember recording the howls and barks to share with the landlord to impress upon him the seriousness of the situation. Though technically I was not his tenant (my employer was), I was trying to help him, as he was renting the place out as a vacation spot and I thought he should speak to his neighbors about the situation.
Instead, the next day he turned up at the house with a rifle. I said, "Miguel, I'm a pet sitter. I'm not going to be shooting any dogs." He taught me how the rifle functioned and some nights I'd scare off large packs of the wild beasts by firing shots into the sky in the direction of the ocean, which was not much further than a stone's throw. Unsurprisingly, it was quite effective. It's the only real gun I've ever fired or even held.
I first saw this Dominique Christina performance of her poem, Karma, about five years back. Still powerful.
The Seventh Art
Conversations on Cinema
The Seventh Art is an independently produced video magazine about cinema.
Lots of good stuff here, including interviews with Pedro Costa, Sean Baker, Terence Davies, David Gordon Greene, Claire Denis, the Safdie Brothers, Ruben Östlund, Lukas Moodysson, Paul Schrader, and Thomas Vinterberg.
Anecdote Alert!
There is also an interview with Toronto filmmaker Hugh Gibson, who I first met in 1993 when he was just 14 or 15 years old. His parents had sent him to Art & Trash Video, a shop I ran from '93 to '98. Because he was underage, his folks wrote him a letter saying that he could rent any film he wished, regardless of the film's rating. I put a note on his file and for the next five years we rented Hugh many of the world's greatest films. (A&T existed pre-DVD, so we were renting out VHS tapes and Laserdiscs.)
To my knowledge, we had the largest foreign film collection in Canada: 14,000 titles from 113 countries, all organized by Country > Director. Regular customers included Cinematheque Ontario, The Festival of Festivals (now called TIFF), and every filmmaker in the city worth their salt. It was a great place to work.
In 1994, we were also one of the first video stores in the world to have a website. I'd built it to help myself learn how to build websites. A few months earlier I'd also built [sic], which was one of the first-ever blogs. (The word blog would not be coined for another 3 years.) [sic] won Canadian Website of the Year, which got it some press, and that, along with the Art & Trash site, led to my phone ringing and me becoming one of the first professional web designers in the country. My clients included YTV, The Ontario Federation of Labour, Danko Jones, and General Motors. I would do this for a living for twelve years until returning to retail at Vortex.
The Art & Trash site contained a searchable database of our entire inventory and I distinctly remember having to repeatedly explain to people what a website was. It was these customer interactions that, in a circuitous way, would also lead to me being interrogated in my living room after midnight by CSIS a few years later, but that's another story altogether.
Years later I would run into Hugh at TIFF when he was introducing a film he hadn't directed. We caught up and met for dinner a few times — turns out he lived on Roncesvalles — but then I lost touch with him when he moved out of the neighborhood.
Here's the trailer for his stellar documentary, The Stairs:
DAY 1
Direct from YYZ to BCN. Easy flight — aren't they all? SIM card. Sandwich. Metro to AirBnB. Marble stairs, 3 flights. The door is huge + heavy. Piotr shakes my hand, shows me the room, explains the fussy shower. Walk to a cafe. Juice and a frittata. So good! The busiest streets I've ever seen. Scooters everywhere. Youth chill in the evening air.
2
Morning Frittata. Clean air and spacious side streets. Bookstores. Beautiful editions of Chandler and James M. Cain. Walk to the park. I give coins to a singer of Delta blues. Gaudi's bedroom is uncannily calming. Cocktails at Elephanta with Anabel Caravaca and Jean Rhys. Good Morning, Midnight.
3
Train to Valencia. Another AirBnB, this one more "factory." Museums. Basilicas. Much porcelain. Grotesques and gargoyles abound. Delicious Charcuterie and the worst Martini I've ever had. I am older than the Font Del Túria, but it has me beat in beauty, poise, and bird shit.
4
Bus to Oliva. Call Joe the British cabbie. "Five minutes," he says, but is there in three. "Can you take me to Anna Maria's blue house."
"Are you good friends?"
"I've never met her."
He nods, a look of concern on his face. Something's amuck. I should have asked more questions before boarding that plane.
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"I don't understand."
"She's hired me to look after her cat while she travels."
"Didn't you say you were from Canada?!"
"Yes."
"And you're here for 3 months?"
"Yes."
Another look. Something is definitely amuck.
Locked gate. I consider climbing it, but wait. Ten minutes and out she comes, saying she didn't hear me calling. Is she what I expected? What did I expect? "It's hot, let's go inside." An accent, but not a Spanish one.
She introduces Blanche, the cat. My charge. Instantly, I know she's going to be a nightmare.
Anna Maria offers lunch and I accept. Fish and rice. The two bedroom house is charming. "How long have you lived here?"
"A few months."
"And you're off on vacation so soon?"
"I'm already on vacation. This isn't my house."
"I'm sorry?"
05
She rented the house for a year. Paid in advance. After seven months, she wants to leave. "They've found me."
"Who?"
She doesn't answer. The look on her face is either, "You know who," or "I'm not sure I can trust you with that information."
She paces the kitchen holding a butter knife. "Tomorrow, Miguel will join us for lunch."
"Who's Miguel?"
"This is his house. He wants to meet you. Says he never agreed to another 'tenant'. He's not happy I've hired you. He's police."
Great. "Tomorrow? For lunch?" She nods. "But what time's your flight?"
"I haven't bought my ticket yet. I was hoping you'd help me with that. No point using my phone. Lets talk about it tomorrow. You should take a walk. Get to know the area."
I walk the beach. Wonder what I've got myself into.
06
Anna Maria stares out the window. "He's the one that's doing it," she says. I look over her shoulder. In the distance, maybe 400 feet, I see another house. No people.
I change the subject, ask how often she gets to the beach. Does she like the area? She confesses she rarely leaves the house. "I can't spend another minute in this town."
Miguel joins us for lunch. We bond talking about music. I help him with his phone. He's delighted I'll be looking after his house for the next 3 months.
Another walk. Fishing cabins on quiet streams.
Someone in the bushes ahead. Miguel, waiting for me. His English is good, but not good enough to find the right word. "Is she..." he points in the direction of the house, then at his own head, twirling his finger, the international symbol for scrambled brains.
"Paranoid," I say. He snaps his fingers. That's the word!
07
Up the beach: swordfish on toast, salad. Five Euro. Love the colors of buildings here.
08
Help Anna Maria purchase plane tickets. Maddening stipulations: Spain to the Maldives, stopping in Abu Dhabi for four days. Only wants to fly in one direction, no flight longer than five hours. No layovers. Takes me two hours to figure it out. She leaves in two days.
09
2am. Awakened by sounds: a pacing, babbling Anna Maria. Fumbling in the silverware drawer. Did I lock the bedroom door?
Stray dogs barking and fighting through the night.
10
Joe picks up Anna Maria.
I discover Ca Fran. Civilized portions of local foods. Solid Vermouth. I teach the young barkeep to make a martini.
11
Sardines from the Super Mercado. A pregnant stray I've named Nina. How does she avoid the packs of wild dogs?
12
Miguel introduces me to Jaime. Funny guy. Asks, "Do you need a girl? I have plenty." Miguel confirms women love Jaime. I tell him thanks, but I'm good. Jamie asks, "You play Dominoes?"
I tell him, "No. I walk."
"Where?"
"Everywhere."
Jaime looks puzzled.
Miguel asks, "Have you heard from Anna Maria?"
"No."
Later, she texts me this picture:
Says she's in the Maldives.
I've never been, so take her word for it, but isn't she supposed to be in Abu Dhabi?
13
Walking, I get approached by a woman standing in front of a house. She speaks little English. "Sack? Sack?" I ask if she means my backpack. "No. Sack?"
I ask if I can take her picture. She says no, and heads into her house, nodding for me to follow. Instead, I continue down the road.
14
I follow a costumed woman to a Parade.
15
I climb a large hill to Castillo de Santa Ana. The smell of wild flowers and herbs is overwhelming. The entire city stretches below, the Playa in the distance, my house a blurred speck before the dark water.
16
Wander randomly into Bar Amigos. Am told I'm their first-ever customer so I can drink for free. I tell them they best reconsider or nothing will be left for the paying customers. They invite me to the grand opening. "Friday. The Mayor will be here." I say, Sure, and order a martini. They don't have the ingredients and wouldn't know how to make it if they did.
17
I've been sending daily poems to Burning the Days, my mailing list. It's a struggle and I blame my stroke rather than my fortitude. I notice Jessamyn West unsubscribes, and I question what I'm doing.
I walk the streets listening again to Will Patton reading Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son & Train Dreams. A day will come when I've committed them to memory. "And suddenly it all went black, and that time was gone forever."
18
Guitarist and songwriter Karl Hendricks died yesterday after a three-year battle with oral cancer. He was at home in Pittsburgh with his wife and daughters (wearing a Funkadelic t-shirt). He was 46.
I realize this news won't mean anything to most of you, but Hendricks was a unique guitarist, singer, and songwriter known primarily as the frontman of The Karl Hendricks Trio ("Fervently confessional indie rock in the vein of Superchunk, Pavement, and Dinosaur Jr. that combines spindly, wailing guitars with lyrics of heartbreak, dissonance, and disgust. " – Allmusic).
He also owned Pittsburgh record shop, Sound Cat.
I listened to him a bunch in the 90s and still think fondly of a a number of his tracks, like The Worst Coffee I've Ever Had from "Declare Your Weapons" or Somewhere a Weekend of Sin from "For a While It Was Funny".
His music may not be to your taste, but in my 20s I loved it. No one really wrote, sang, or played like Karl.
The Worst Coffee I've Ever Had by The Karl Hendricks Trio
Somewhere A Weekend of Sin by The Karl Hendricks Trio
All his records are out of print, but you can purchase digital copies on the Merge Records' website.
Ripple is a short film by Connor Griffith. "It's a flurry of frame-by-frame images, mostly from Google Earth and Wikipedia, that depict the many developed and undeveloped surfaces on the planet." — the Atlantic
Every Single Word Spoken is a site highlighting the lack of diversity in films and shows. It does this with math.
For instance:
Total runtime of all Nancy Meyers-directed movies: 12 hours and 43 minutes.
Total run time of POC speaking in NM-directed movies: 5 minutes and 23 seconds.
That’s 0.705%.
Total POC characters: 30.
Total POC characters with no name: 20.
Total POC characters that work in the service industry/assistance: 19.
Total POC characters whose actions affect the storyline: 1.
Number of lines that one character has: 4
This is obviously the entry on director, Nancy Meyers, which has an accompanying video:
When Hollywood claims it doesn't have a diversity problem, it's hard to argue with numbers.
The site was created by actor Dylan Marron, author of Conversations With People Who Hate Me. Marron also has a TED Talk:
Outstanding short film, Noah, just won TIFF's short film competition. Well deserved. Terrifically done.
