Thursday, April 13, 2006
Hamlet's Mill and Blood Meridian
The following I am posting here especially for my sister and mister anchovy to read. It's an excerpt from a discussion at one of my online book clubs. It's just easier to post this here than make you two search around the site for McCarthy. Besides maybe some other poor bastard out there is obsessed, like me,with one of these books and might find this here ha ha.
I am a fan of both Blood Meridian and Hamlet's Mill, so much so they are both on my World Peace Reading List, heh heh, only a real jerk dreamer would make a world peace reading list. Anyways, guys, Ken in New York a participant at mcCarthy forum has always been an incredible writer and reader and he brings a lot of understanding of myths and images to his readings...he sums up Hamlet's Mill very nicely here, flaws and all...of course this is my shameless attempt to get my sister to finally read Hamlet's Mill!!! I have a link for the entire book here online, hint hint.
Candy Minx, etal.: Been away from the Forum, and in the time away, I finally read Hamlet's Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deshend (1969)!
It's only been, what?, five years or so since Candy first recommended it to me in this Forum! I like it even better than I expected. Procrastinating had its justifications and benefits. I had some notions then, but I might have systematically imposed the conscripts of HM on BM, and that would have been detrimental to a personal understanding of BM. Five additional years of playing with "conspiracy theories" helped me figure out and think through some things and did much to reshape my reading of McCarthy, and reading HM now would be more meaningful.
And now that I've read it, how could I not have HM in mind if I should expand and rewrite the initial posts above? (I even think about what in HM I would rewrite, laughing out loud!, but is this so different from McCarthy's profusive margin notes on Lisa Randall's draft manuscript?) I did frequently have BM moments while reading HM. Nevertheless, unless the reader already suspected McCarthy's subversiveness in these ways, HM might not at all harken BM. Anyway, one should read HM for its own merits and on its own terms rather than for its possible applications to McCarthy.
The book begins with the tracing of Shakespeare's Hamlet story to its analogues and predecessors and possible roots. I had heard the Shakespeare story was based on an older story that was probably based on some actual historical events somewhere in Europe not unlike Denmark, but HM blows my preconceptions away by going much deeper into the search and taking the reader into wildly unexpected places. First, the authors show that the Hamlet story is quite universal, with counterparts in Finland, Iran, India, etc., implying that the story might be more allegorical than historical. If the authors had stopped at this point, I would have learned something about the background of the Hamlet story, but the fun is just beginning. The authors then show that the story is really about the earth's peculiar motion around the sun, i.e., the tilt of the earth's axis of rotation relative to the sun and the precession of the axis! To make this argument, the authors use comparative mythology, comparative philology, and astronomy! The authors use the example of Hamlet to introduce their thesis, which is that many mythologies of disparate ancient cultures are counterparts of one another and are in essence accounts of astronomy as experienced on earth.
I should now include the precession of the axis. I thought the tilt of the earth's axis would be sufficient, but the precession, measured by the same zodiac, provide additional myths that harken McCarthy. I thought perhaps ancient peoples did not have the "sophistication" to grasp this notion or to be aware of this motion, but the authors convince me otherwise. I should now include the Milky Way too. Some millennia ago, the Milky Way started in Taurus and ended in Scorpio on the ecliptic, hence, according to HM, Scorpio has the association with death, and the path along the Milky Way leading to Scorpio is a road for dead souls. This would be compatible with my placement of Holden and Chigurh in Scorpio, and harken the Epilogue of BM as well. Also, the precession of the axis shifted away from Taurus to Aries then to Pisces where we are currently. The sign being shifted away from is thought of as in decline, and this would be compatible with my placement of Bell in Taurus. Anyway, these are initial thoughts.
[Not McCarthy, but ... just for the gumption, this paragraph is an example of where I would rewrite HM! In the Introduction, the authors mention the significance of the number 108, but do not explain. In the text, there are several opportunities to discuss this significance, yet the authors sometimes fail to even note the 108. The reader could put two and two together, literally, and work out all the factors and some of the multiples of 108. So, when the authors bring up the 60x60x60 dimensions of the ark without mentioning 108, the reader would know that 6x6x6=216=2x108. Okay, when the authors mention the significance of 432,000 to the Rigveda, they do mention 108, as 432=4x108. This one is especially hidden: when the authors discuss the regular pentagon, or the regular dodecahedron whose faces are regular pentagons, the reader would have to figure that since the triangle has 180 degrees, so the pentagon composed of three triangles has 3x180=540 degrees, and so each angle of the regular pentagon has 1/5 of 540 degrees, which is equal to 108 degrees! This is not so obvious, is it? And this is not common knowledge, is it? Are the authors unaware of the 108 association, or do they expect the reader to do the math right there and then? And then there is the typo that does a disservice as well: 108 = "9x13" should instead read "9x12". 9x13 is not equal to 108 but to 117, that "117" thing, laughing out loud!]
Anyway, Candy, as you can see, I too could go on and on about HM, but let me stop myself here. It is a work that calls for another reading. It is the second book I've read which quotes Paul Valery in the introduction and contains XXIII chapters followed by an Epilogue; and, the last chapter ends with images of singing and dancing, clashing doors, death, fire-sticks, above and below, juridical power, and a great circle from pole to pole. Maybe these are signs of a highly entertaining book!
The Usual Suspects: Man/Bull/Lion/Eagle Candy Minx 4/13/2006
I don't know if you can believe this Ken, but I had tears in my eyes reading your post. I thank Adam Starr for turning me on to this book via Secrets of the Incas...he kept telling us about here.
Now, I am relieved to hear you made it throught he book, and aren't laughing at me. I think you are the only person who has read this that I know.
Way back in the day, I discovered kabalah, yeah long before Demi and Madonna...and I had also studied Sansrit and many Indian and Native factions of belief...through kabalah I got into Frances Yates. She often wrote about how something else was going on...in Shakespeare and Bruno and "alchemy". I don't think she ever knew what it was but she knew where to look. In numbers, in memory, in myth.
Since I used to read the Rig Veda and try to memorize it (ha ha I was such a cute little meditator when I was a kid) I noticed some kind of pattern, numbers. And I always knew that the birth of a king or a hero was aligned with stars and celestial activity. Like many people I mistook this for supernatural behaviour. When of course the supernatural and material are always the same thing ha ha silly rabbit.
So...when I read Secrets of The Incas, and then Hamlets Mill, well it was a lifetimes search come true. It was a sense of relief. Of course, i didn't realize at the time it would just add to the ridicule and teasing from friends and disregard from others ha ha." Candys Conspiracys".."Candy the windbag" ha ha...
You are absolutely correct that there are problems with Hamlets Mill.
I too have thought about "re-writing" it. Same as Secrets of the Incas.
There is a fair bit written about the troubles with Hamlets Mill. One of the authours was terminally ill I have read. And their idea to write it as if it were a myth and fugue is wise yet...difficult for those who haven't the dedication to read such a wandering thesis. Yes, they made some sad mistakes and forgot to cross reference themselves in HM...but it is often thought of as a book that you live through rather than expect academic tradition in presentation or style. It's a problem.
Another delightful, profound book is A Story Sharp as a Knife by Robert Bringhurst. he is a master of typography (he wrote the bible) and he translatedHAIDA!!! myths. I don't expect anyone here to know what those are...they are classic stories told in a group of people on the west coast where I grew up. They too were a part of my childhood, Haida and Rig Veda, what a trickster, fate can be! Some other Haida Art
Bringhurst translates these classic Haida myths and stories and it is magic to see how they carry riffs of Hans Christen Andersen and Grimms, some Strong Boy story...hey a kayak could go around the world today...it could go around the world 50,000 years ago too. All stories are one story. A book is made of other books. And could the easy internet help us recover our realdialogue of myths?
Down with farming!
heh heh....
I am a fan of both Blood Meridian and Hamlet's Mill, so much so they are both on my World Peace Reading List, heh heh, only a real jerk dreamer would make a world peace reading list. Anyways, guys, Ken in New York a participant at mcCarthy forum has always been an incredible writer and reader and he brings a lot of understanding of myths and images to his readings...he sums up Hamlet's Mill very nicely here, flaws and all...of course this is my shameless attempt to get my sister to finally read Hamlet's Mill!!! I have a link for the entire book here online, hint hint.
Candy Minx, etal.: Been away from the Forum, and in the time away, I finally read Hamlet's Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time, by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deshend (1969)!
It's only been, what?, five years or so since Candy first recommended it to me in this Forum! I like it even better than I expected. Procrastinating had its justifications and benefits. I had some notions then, but I might have systematically imposed the conscripts of HM on BM, and that would have been detrimental to a personal understanding of BM. Five additional years of playing with "conspiracy theories" helped me figure out and think through some things and did much to reshape my reading of McCarthy, and reading HM now would be more meaningful.
And now that I've read it, how could I not have HM in mind if I should expand and rewrite the initial posts above? (I even think about what in HM I would rewrite, laughing out loud!, but is this so different from McCarthy's profusive margin notes on Lisa Randall's draft manuscript?) I did frequently have BM moments while reading HM. Nevertheless, unless the reader already suspected McCarthy's subversiveness in these ways, HM might not at all harken BM. Anyway, one should read HM for its own merits and on its own terms rather than for its possible applications to McCarthy.
The book begins with the tracing of Shakespeare's Hamlet story to its analogues and predecessors and possible roots. I had heard the Shakespeare story was based on an older story that was probably based on some actual historical events somewhere in Europe not unlike Denmark, but HM blows my preconceptions away by going much deeper into the search and taking the reader into wildly unexpected places. First, the authors show that the Hamlet story is quite universal, with counterparts in Finland, Iran, India, etc., implying that the story might be more allegorical than historical. If the authors had stopped at this point, I would have learned something about the background of the Hamlet story, but the fun is just beginning. The authors then show that the story is really about the earth's peculiar motion around the sun, i.e., the tilt of the earth's axis of rotation relative to the sun and the precession of the axis! To make this argument, the authors use comparative mythology, comparative philology, and astronomy! The authors use the example of Hamlet to introduce their thesis, which is that many mythologies of disparate ancient cultures are counterparts of one another and are in essence accounts of astronomy as experienced on earth.
I should now include the precession of the axis. I thought the tilt of the earth's axis would be sufficient, but the precession, measured by the same zodiac, provide additional myths that harken McCarthy. I thought perhaps ancient peoples did not have the "sophistication" to grasp this notion or to be aware of this motion, but the authors convince me otherwise. I should now include the Milky Way too. Some millennia ago, the Milky Way started in Taurus and ended in Scorpio on the ecliptic, hence, according to HM, Scorpio has the association with death, and the path along the Milky Way leading to Scorpio is a road for dead souls. This would be compatible with my placement of Holden and Chigurh in Scorpio, and harken the Epilogue of BM as well. Also, the precession of the axis shifted away from Taurus to Aries then to Pisces where we are currently. The sign being shifted away from is thought of as in decline, and this would be compatible with my placement of Bell in Taurus. Anyway, these are initial thoughts.
[Not McCarthy, but ... just for the gumption, this paragraph is an example of where I would rewrite HM! In the Introduction, the authors mention the significance of the number 108, but do not explain. In the text, there are several opportunities to discuss this significance, yet the authors sometimes fail to even note the 108. The reader could put two and two together, literally, and work out all the factors and some of the multiples of 108. So, when the authors bring up the 60x60x60 dimensions of the ark without mentioning 108, the reader would know that 6x6x6=216=2x108. Okay, when the authors mention the significance of 432,000 to the Rigveda, they do mention 108, as 432=4x108. This one is especially hidden: when the authors discuss the regular pentagon, or the regular dodecahedron whose faces are regular pentagons, the reader would have to figure that since the triangle has 180 degrees, so the pentagon composed of three triangles has 3x180=540 degrees, and so each angle of the regular pentagon has 1/5 of 540 degrees, which is equal to 108 degrees! This is not so obvious, is it? And this is not common knowledge, is it? Are the authors unaware of the 108 association, or do they expect the reader to do the math right there and then? And then there is the typo that does a disservice as well: 108 = "9x13" should instead read "9x12". 9x13 is not equal to 108 but to 117, that "117" thing, laughing out loud!]
Anyway, Candy, as you can see, I too could go on and on about HM, but let me stop myself here. It is a work that calls for another reading. It is the second book I've read which quotes Paul Valery in the introduction and contains XXIII chapters followed by an Epilogue; and, the last chapter ends with images of singing and dancing, clashing doors, death, fire-sticks, above and below, juridical power, and a great circle from pole to pole. Maybe these are signs of a highly entertaining book!
The Usual Suspects: Man/Bull/Lion/Eagle Candy Minx 4/13/2006
I don't know if you can believe this Ken, but I had tears in my eyes reading your post. I thank Adam Starr for turning me on to this book via Secrets of the Incas...he kept telling us about here.
Now, I am relieved to hear you made it throught he book, and aren't laughing at me. I think you are the only person who has read this that I know.
Way back in the day, I discovered kabalah, yeah long before Demi and Madonna...and I had also studied Sansrit and many Indian and Native factions of belief...through kabalah I got into Frances Yates. She often wrote about how something else was going on...in Shakespeare and Bruno and "alchemy". I don't think she ever knew what it was but she knew where to look. In numbers, in memory, in myth.
Since I used to read the Rig Veda and try to memorize it (ha ha I was such a cute little meditator when I was a kid) I noticed some kind of pattern, numbers. And I always knew that the birth of a king or a hero was aligned with stars and celestial activity. Like many people I mistook this for supernatural behaviour. When of course the supernatural and material are always the same thing ha ha silly rabbit.
So...when I read Secrets of The Incas, and then Hamlets Mill, well it was a lifetimes search come true. It was a sense of relief. Of course, i didn't realize at the time it would just add to the ridicule and teasing from friends and disregard from others ha ha." Candys Conspiracys".."Candy the windbag" ha ha...
You are absolutely correct that there are problems with Hamlets Mill.
I too have thought about "re-writing" it. Same as Secrets of the Incas.
There is a fair bit written about the troubles with Hamlets Mill. One of the authours was terminally ill I have read. And their idea to write it as if it were a myth and fugue is wise yet...difficult for those who haven't the dedication to read such a wandering thesis. Yes, they made some sad mistakes and forgot to cross reference themselves in HM...but it is often thought of as a book that you live through rather than expect academic tradition in presentation or style. It's a problem.
Another delightful, profound book is A Story Sharp as a Knife by Robert Bringhurst. he is a master of typography (he wrote the bible) and he translated
Bringhurst translates these classic Haida myths and stories and it is magic to see how they carry riffs of Hans Christen Andersen and Grimms, some Strong Boy story...hey a kayak could go around the world today...it could go around the world 50,000 years ago too. All stories are one story. A book is made of other books. And could the easy internet help us recover our real
Down with farming!
heh heh....
Wednesday, April 12, 2006
Extinction Level Event
Okay, so I bug poor Stagg about eating too much junk food. He can find a chicken stuffed with sugar. But, he likes my "near chicken." (organic tofu, I'm not allowed to tell anyone he eats it, I make it with tamari, garlic, olive oil and hot red peppers. It's awesome). It's balance right? Working together, right? I benefit by getting his Johnny Depp cereal box for my own use in art work. When it comes to art and working side by side...we leave each other alone and enjoy blaring the stereo. We mind the real estate. Sacred ground. Tribal.
My half of studio. See. Pretty colours. Tidy. Ish.
Staggs half. I don't touch, move things, try to give orders how to organize it...he likes to work loose and with stuff all around him. Its how he builds his images. I'm not gonna mess with the guys art work. Word.
Stagg reorganized his space last week.
Speaking of balance...I go to paint today (ha ha ha right) and find this "shelf" making a tectonic shift. This is bad. It must have been happening all morning. He's not home. Should I intervene?
My half of studio. See. Pretty colours. Tidy. Ish.
Staggs half. I don't touch, move things, try to give orders how to organize it...he likes to work loose and with stuff all around him. Its how he builds his images. I'm not gonna mess with the guys art work. Word.
Stagg reorganized his space last week.
Speaking of balance...I go to paint today (ha ha ha right) and find this "shelf" making a tectonic shift. This is bad. It must have been happening all morning. He's not home. Should I intervene?
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
Tuesdays With Stagg
5 a.m. comes fast. I freak out because while Stagg is in the shower I see the empty box of Johnny Depp cereal. This guy eats more sugar than I believed was possible. When I got here all the food had sugar in it. Little Miss Organic tried to be cool. The peanut butter, the tinned tomatoes, chili, tomato sauce, corn; sugar in everything. Then the maple syrup didn't have any maple syrup. It was a "reduced calorie syrup product". I was like where am I? Who eats like this? I have never had a microwave or margerine in my house. I've been known to make my own organic ketchup! (chutney) So I start mixing up some scrambled eggs to counter the cereal. I can not cook eggs. But scramble is so-so. I just put piles of cheese on the eggs.
There he can go to work with some protein. Farming has given us many terrific things: is the most famous, diabetes?
Totalitarian farming is so corrupt that it puts money before nutrition. Only farm mindset would create a sugar syrup knowing people are too poor or enamored by a notion of "progress" to realize that maple syrup has health benefits as well as delicious sweetness. Insert sugar to sell a product. Sugar has a place in cooking, but in everything? What is that?
Stagg and I have lots of things in common and some things radically not in common. It is a lot of fun to find these things out and sometimes we are laughing a lot all about our differences. We both love music and movies. Part of a gift I brought with me for him was a dvd I found of N.W.A. He saw them back in the day with Ice T. I'm so jealous! And I brought 24 Hour Party People and he already owned it! It is one of my favourite movies ever. So we both love rap and techno. Thats our dance zone. He has a huge range of music interests. Me I like to think I do but I tend to listen in phases.
I've started a new painting so I knew today I would be busy avoiding it. As I have explained here before, when I am painting I am the most active and productive member of society because I get a kind of agitated panic and will avoid avoid avoid the painting and then run to it then run from it then to it, oh wait I digress.
So...I started making ox-tail soup. I have chicken soup and ox-tail soup around at all times. It's a thing I have. Soup. Staple. So I start a bunch of broth today for lunches. I have two recorded programs of Oprah I can watch. Both depressing, one about the song Stupid Girls with Pink on the program. She asks, name five female celebrities famous for their image of intelligence? She says Natalie Portman and Angelina Jolie. I might say Jodie Foster. Karrine Steffans is also on show talking about the perils of being a Hip Hop Ho. I am so getting this book. Anyways the gist of the show was that it is lucrative for women to pretend to be stupid in show business. And are young girls going to think it's cool to make a sex video and then leak it?
The other Oprah program is about schools. Now, many of you already know that I think "school" is the longest con ever played out. We teach kids a bunch of boring info within a boring schedule by a regime. I believe in apprenticeship. In hands on, in music and art and science, I believe in teachers. And school is the lamest place to learn or find the shit. Oprah had kids in Chicagoland trade schools. The kids downtown found out their whole high school has been the biggest rip off. The buildings are falling apart, they barely have instruments to play. And the school the city kids went to visit...had Olympic sized pool, state-of-the-art gym, windows, and Johnhopkinsesque science labs. Oh man, what are we supposed to do about this rotten system? The inconsistencies? When I tell Stagg about this he says, Candy, it's America. Well, I say, that downtown school looked like my first high school. And eventually someone burnt my old school down.
I managed to avoid the painting all afternoon. Now we must dance.
Wow, I pass Wriggley Feild every week on my way to dance workshop and tonight it was hopping with the new season. The atmosphere is so radically different than Canadian baseball. Well, the bar scene around the stadium here is massive, for miles. In Toronto the main strip is cold feeling and modern. My friend Suzanne and I used to go to Wayne Gretzky's just for the good tvs and the guys, but in general most residents don't really like the area. But Wrigleyville is warm and the bars and buildings are more established and homey. What are the people in the parking lot doing? Is that tailgating? You would never see this in Canada. Not the same vibe.
I went to dance early so I could grab a coffee and read Vanity Fair. The article on Suzy Parker was excellent.
On the bus ride home, all I could think about was the ox-tail soup broth I had in the fridge. I'm so hungry after dance. This organic celery is so amazing, so fresh and strong flavour. Is it me or do organic vegies taste better? I put pounds of the celery in the soup.
Okay, I do not have a future carreer as a food stylist. We bought this wine purely because it was Vampire. (I used to be really into Goth, I still am I just don't look like it) It is a"A Transylvania Import" Produced and bottled in Translyvania. We were so thrilled. On my way home from dance workshop, I just wanted to cook up some ox tail soup and have a glass of this. I am really into champagne and keep forgetting to pick up red wiine. So my ox-tail soup is going to have a bit of white wine in it, oh well.The following photo is so scary I shouldn't even post it, but I know my sister Kiki (www.cbc.ca/bcalmanac/recipes.html ) a chef will find it hilarious. I find it especially funny considering I have two links here to food blogs, and their photos are so beautiful. Just watch Jamie and Belle actually check into my blog! And they are perfect anyways those two. My God they are like supermodels. And their food photos look so good. I'm a photographer I should be able to do this! Meanwhile poor Stagg, I come home all a mess from hip hop, and open up Vampire wine. Well, lets face it, my savvy is "street", so I guess my food is too, heh heh.
I can't believe it. I'm listed in IMDb I'm laughing so hard. We filmed it in the middle of a Toronto winter that was truly brutal. For a few days it was -22 Celcius. I have no idea what that was in Farenheit, but way below Zero. And one of my jobs was to stay by the camera during breaks. We shot outside on one of the those cold days. I put cayenne in my boots to keep my feet warm. I don't know, is that a real thing or did I just make that up, cayenne in boots? I occasionally run into people from that shoot, and we're always like, "can you believe we worked through that" it was so crazy but a lot of fun. I completely forgot I played a "pool player". I don't even know how to hold a pool cue. I've never seen the movie. But then I've never seen the movie I was in with Kelly McGillis either.
So...my end goal today was to get some soup finished, check. Get to dance class, check. Get some good food into Stagg, check. Make sure "my shows" are recorded (I have a whole world of tv that I watch that Stagg does not...House, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, a shitload of reality tv, Regis and Kelly, Oprah, The West Wing, and anything with Keanu Reeves in it. Right now that is Constantine. Stagg doesn't watch horror movies either. So thats a double strike out) And watch the movie It's All Gone Pete Tong, check. And work on my new painting. Oops.
It's All Gone Pete Tong had a lot of press and I was anxious to see it when it was released because it was directed by Fubars Michael Dowse and I loved Fubar. And it's Canadian.
It was hilarious and had a lot of heart. I think that's an incredible accomplishment in a comedy. We both really loved it. Oh boy, Midnight comes just as fast as 5 a.m.
What a great day.
I am left with many questions...
Do organic vegetables really taste better?
Does cayenne in your boots warm your feet?
Name five female celebrities with image of intelligence?
Will I ever become accomplished at hip hop?
How do Jamie and Belle look so good cooking?
Is Pete Tong a real person?
And what the hell do we do with the education system?
There he can go to work with some protein. Farming has given us many terrific things: is the most famous, diabetes?
Totalitarian farming is so corrupt that it puts money before nutrition. Only farm mindset would create a sugar syrup knowing people are too poor or enamored by a notion of "progress" to realize that maple syrup has health benefits as well as delicious sweetness. Insert sugar to sell a product. Sugar has a place in cooking, but in everything? What is that?
Stagg and I have lots of things in common and some things radically not in common. It is a lot of fun to find these things out and sometimes we are laughing a lot all about our differences. We both love music and movies. Part of a gift I brought with me for him was a dvd I found of N.W.A. He saw them back in the day with Ice T. I'm so jealous! And I brought 24 Hour Party People and he already owned it! It is one of my favourite movies ever. So we both love rap and techno. Thats our dance zone. He has a huge range of music interests. Me I like to think I do but I tend to listen in phases.
I've started a new painting so I knew today I would be busy avoiding it. As I have explained here before, when I am painting I am the most active and productive member of society because I get a kind of agitated panic and will avoid avoid avoid the painting and then run to it then run from it then to it, oh wait I digress.
So...I started making ox-tail soup. I have chicken soup and ox-tail soup around at all times. It's a thing I have. Soup. Staple. So I start a bunch of broth today for lunches. I have two recorded programs of Oprah I can watch. Both depressing, one about the song Stupid Girls with Pink on the program. She asks, name five female celebrities famous for their image of intelligence? She says Natalie Portman and Angelina Jolie. I might say Jodie Foster. Karrine Steffans is also on show talking about the perils of being a Hip Hop Ho. I am so getting this book. Anyways the gist of the show was that it is lucrative for women to pretend to be stupid in show business. And are young girls going to think it's cool to make a sex video and then leak it?
The other Oprah program is about schools. Now, many of you already know that I think "school" is the longest con ever played out. We teach kids a bunch of boring info within a boring schedule by a regime. I believe in apprenticeship. In hands on, in music and art and science, I believe in teachers. And school is the lamest place to learn or find the shit. Oprah had kids in Chicagoland trade schools. The kids downtown found out their whole high school has been the biggest rip off. The buildings are falling apart, they barely have instruments to play. And the school the city kids went to visit...had Olympic sized pool, state-of-the-art gym, windows, and Johnhopkinsesque science labs. Oh man, what are we supposed to do about this rotten system? The inconsistencies? When I tell Stagg about this he says, Candy, it's America. Well, I say, that downtown school looked like my first high school. And eventually someone burnt my old school down.
I managed to avoid the painting all afternoon. Now we must dance.
Wow, I pass Wriggley Feild every week on my way to dance workshop and tonight it was hopping with the new season. The atmosphere is so radically different than Canadian baseball. Well, the bar scene around the stadium here is massive, for miles. In Toronto the main strip is cold feeling and modern. My friend Suzanne and I used to go to Wayne Gretzky's just for the good tvs and the guys, but in general most residents don't really like the area. But Wrigleyville is warm and the bars and buildings are more established and homey. What are the people in the parking lot doing? Is that tailgating? You would never see this in Canada. Not the same vibe.
I went to dance early so I could grab a coffee and read Vanity Fair. The article on Suzy Parker was excellent.
On the bus ride home, all I could think about was the ox-tail soup broth I had in the fridge. I'm so hungry after dance. This organic celery is so amazing, so fresh and strong flavour. Is it me or do organic vegies taste better? I put pounds of the celery in the soup.
Okay, I do not have a future carreer as a food stylist. We bought this wine purely because it was Vampire. (I used to be really into Goth, I still am I just don't look like it) It is a"A Transylvania Import" Produced and bottled in Translyvania. We were so thrilled. On my way home from dance workshop, I just wanted to cook up some ox tail soup and have a glass of this. I am really into champagne and keep forgetting to pick up red wiine. So my ox-tail soup is going to have a bit of white wine in it, oh well.The following photo is so scary I shouldn't even post it, but I know my sister Kiki (www.cbc.ca/bcalmanac/recipes.html ) a chef will find it hilarious. I find it especially funny considering I have two links here to food blogs, and their photos are so beautiful. Just watch Jamie and Belle actually check into my blog! And they are perfect anyways those two. My God they are like supermodels. And their food photos look so good. I'm a photographer I should be able to do this! Meanwhile poor Stagg, I come home all a mess from hip hop, and open up Vampire wine. Well, lets face it, my savvy is "street", so I guess my food is too, heh heh.
I can't believe it. I'm listed in IMDb I'm laughing so hard. We filmed it in the middle of a Toronto winter that was truly brutal. For a few days it was -22 Celcius. I have no idea what that was in Farenheit, but way below Zero. And one of my jobs was to stay by the camera during breaks. We shot outside on one of the those cold days. I put cayenne in my boots to keep my feet warm. I don't know, is that a real thing or did I just make that up, cayenne in boots? I occasionally run into people from that shoot, and we're always like, "can you believe we worked through that" it was so crazy but a lot of fun. I completely forgot I played a "pool player". I don't even know how to hold a pool cue. I've never seen the movie. But then I've never seen the movie I was in with Kelly McGillis either.
So...my end goal today was to get some soup finished, check. Get to dance class, check. Get some good food into Stagg, check. Make sure "my shows" are recorded (I have a whole world of tv that I watch that Stagg does not...House, Grey's Anatomy, Lost, a shitload of reality tv, Regis and Kelly, Oprah, The West Wing, and anything with Keanu Reeves in it. Right now that is Constantine. Stagg doesn't watch horror movies either. So thats a double strike out) And watch the movie It's All Gone Pete Tong, check. And work on my new painting. Oops.
It's All Gone Pete Tong had a lot of press and I was anxious to see it when it was released because it was directed by Fubars Michael Dowse and I loved Fubar. And it's Canadian.
It was hilarious and had a lot of heart. I think that's an incredible accomplishment in a comedy. We both really loved it. Oh boy, Midnight comes just as fast as 5 a.m.
What a great day.
I am left with many questions...
Do organic vegetables really taste better?
Does cayenne in your boots warm your feet?
Name five female celebrities with image of intelligence?
Will I ever become accomplished at hip hop?
How do Jamie and Belle look so good cooking?
Is Pete Tong a real person?
And what the hell do we do with the education system?
Monday, April 10, 2006
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Little Sweden
See the blue and yellow awnings? I was so surprised to find such a significant Swedish area in Chicago. Toy stores, delis, xmas stores.
In Andersenville...
Cool old fashioned Scandinavian wallpaper inside the deli. the woman who runs this deli used to go to see her sister in Toronto. She loved Kensington Market where you could buy live rabbits for dinner. (long outlawed)
Swedish American Museum Centre
Toronto mayor David Miller is in Vanity Fair! This is May's "green issue". He is standing next to Chicago's mayor Daley. These guys represent "green mayors".
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