Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Ms. Donina Birnnam: I’ll cry tomorrow—or when I get home…


Skye’s 3 years old birthday party today. You gotta love a party that starts at 10am.
Gotta love a 10am party with Bloody Mary’s either with gin or with vodka.

Gotta love German Chocolate cake. Sal clearly does because he ordered cake for 75.
GCC is irresistible, all chocolaty brown, buttery, nutty s
weet and delicious.
Cake and Bloody Mary before 12 pm, who doesn’t love that?

Last night after the depressing monthly phone call I went out to get a gift for Skye. My plan to get the ab/cd logo shirt fell through and I ended up in the polar opposite store (all lacy and cutesy with a spacy lady owner). But she did have a couple of beautiful little dresses amidst the cloying vestments all hand smocked with rickrack and embroidery. Very old-fashioned and sweet. There was a stiff blue one with a collar but after suspiciously inquiring about the size, I chose a sunny yellow sundress with white smocking and covered buttons down the back. The lady was clearly disappointed that I didn’t buy the blue dress with the crinoline. “It could be her Easter dress” she sighed. I explained that I might run into trouble with the mom (meaning I didn’t want to buy something---unless it was a pink or black ac/dc logo shirt—-that might interfere with Karla’s taste). She replied understandingly, “Oh the mother wants to buy the Easter dress.” “Whatever, I thought, “little Fatima Esther Muhammad Qing Jiang Goldenstein MAY NOT REQUIRE an Easter dress.”

The lady was wrapping it up and I was pulling out my source of despair to pay. I had already been getting hot eyes and all constricted trying to figure out the size of the dress. Plus all that rick-rack and smocking--and the thought of my kindergarten portrait wearing the navy blue calico dress with the red stitching and the white peter pan collar.
And mom gone 10 years now.

Another lady, a “mommy”, who had come back into the store to buy the pink baby doll that her little boy had been requesting (“he’s really been wanting a baby doll.” she explained, needlessly) said; ”Oh it’s so hard to find those old fashioned dresses. My grandmother used to do all that smocking by hand.” “My m-m-m-mother did too-ooo”, I yodeled, as I turned to the door just beating the tears.

So, miserable, with the little dress under my arm I walked towards the Y where I’ve been walking on the treadmill with Mr. ANXIETY nipping at my heels, but being “Nicky Geld”, my abbreviated membership doesn’t allow me go after 3pm so I went across the street to the bar.

I only had one drink but it was on the Parson’s Friday empty stomach so it packed a kick…and it was gin. I began to imagine myself like “the great Mr. Don Birnam”, Ray Milland-like in the Lost Weekend on a misery soaked bender, my film project hopelessly stalled, in the throws of financial ruin, drinking my way into Boliva (thank you, emily) and eventually trying sell or trade the little yellow dress for just one last drink. “C'mon (fill in bartender’s name here) I NEED it!” Or after finding a suitable drinks donor-daddy, I traipse out to the street, head thrown back laughing, lipstick all smeared, my down-at-heel heel puncturing the little dress box as it gets trampled in our debauched departure.

(Douglas provided the last and most frightful scenario which was waking up the next morning, hungover, in bed with some guy wearing the little yellow dress.)










Thursday, February 02, 2006

"Bonjour mon fils!"



btw in Paris I also saw:


Olé!:
w/ Gerard Depardieu who téléphoner-ed his performance in.


Angel-a de Luc Besson

Just writing the title irritates me.

Major Dundee

Just thinking about Richard Harris makes me SCREAM!

















whhoooaaayyayeayeyyaooo!

One Hour With You
Heaven!

Matchpoint
Is Woody back? More later.

On TV: Le Mepris
Casino Royale


And best of all:
dvd’s of Les Gendarmes!


Le Gendarme de San Tropez
Le Gendarme à New York
Le Gendarme en balade (fab!)


Sunday, January 29, 2006

Paree!


I'm a bad or at least inconsistent, blogger--but maybe I'll get better. Today I'm a bit sad because I'm moving out of the studio that I've rented for 3 years from terrific Stacey at Red Lipstick. We went out and had an impromptu dinner at Beast and a big long rag. I was chagrinned to remember, when Stacey treated me, that the occasion we were celebrating was my leaving the studio space.

Since the time I realized that I would not be able to maintain a separate studio I’ve been weirdly productive but today I finally had to put everything away and get it boxed up and ready for tomorrow's pickup. Then it all gets jammed into my jammed apartment. There's a lotta work to do...

Anyway! In Paris--where I spent a pretty great Xmas and New Year--well, bien sur, I saw several movies.


By far, my happiest movie-going experience during the almost 3 weeks there was going to see "Une heure près de toi"--One Hour with You de mon boyfriend, Ernst Lubitsch. There's nothing more fun than seeing Paramount Paris in Paris and giggling to Maurice Chevalier's puns in accented english, translated into apparently not very funny French. Since much of the dialogue is rhymed and sung, there was a bit of a problem keeping up with the sprit of the words. Even with my challenged french I could tell the subtitles were not very buoyant. There was one part that was nice. Jeanette and Maurice are singing "What a Little Thing Like a Wedding Ring Can Do" which was translated in the subtitles as something like:

Une bague sur la doigt,
Donnez-vous tous les droits...

At some point well into the film, an elderly couple struggled into the mostly empty cinema and to my chagrin practically sat on top of me (because I was dead center in the theater having nerdishly arrived to a 2pm show so early that the gates were still down around the ticket booth). After lengthy settling in with requisite bag crumpling, the vielle homme suddenly blurted out in a loud, American, I'm-kinda-deaf, voice: "This is a CRAZY, OLD MOVIE!!" And then he cracked up.

Right On, Mon Gar!!


Wednesday, July 20, 2005

Goin' Hollywood

What's more wonderous than a Bing Crosby festival? FinallY! I feel like I'm so busy with my Creative Capital presentation that I can't give the full attention to this Crosby event as I would like. An appreciation of his films is long overdue.

Even after seeing Goin' Hollywood 2 or 3 times at tghe movies and having shown it in class, it was exciting to see it at the Walter Reade and the print looked great.

This film along with The Country Girl makes an intesresting program--and both films like other Crosby movies are quite self-reflexive.

falling asleep--later.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Love George Raft

I've finally moved (after a 2 year struggle) to Park Slope--and one of the downsides is that I can no longer mainline into the Film Forum or BAM like I did from Prospect Heights.

So, unused to F train timing, I missed 1/2 hour of Bolero with smokey-eyed George Raft. But what I did see was bliss inducing...
GR flashing around often leaving partner, Carol Lombard, in his wake. Flipping his tailcoat tails around his hips and sitting down in the club for a bracing cup of coffee after the number.

George Raft dancing makes me feel much better. So does Freddie.

And then there's One Hour With You...

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Me Myself and Ina

...I realize now the above is what I should have named my blog. I've been jonesing after this blog idea and now that I've finally gotten it set up I'm experiencing an intense stage fright.

Why The Love Parade (sez I to me)? Because I keep a film journal and the notes there frequently sashay into my artwork and life. So why not share(?)the parade of thoughts.

I went with Mel and Sergio to see my old nyu schoolmate's film
Machuca at the Film Forum last night. Unusual for me because I like any socially challenged movie-goer usually attend film events on my own (more on that predilection here: papotage). But I wanted to go with them because Sergio is from Chile as is Andres Wood the filmmaker. And it happens that the film, set in 1973 Santiago de Chile, was shot in part in the very same boarding school that Sergio attended. New York is an amazing place--one can't say it enough. I'm glad I went on a film date with friends--it kept me from freaking out when I realized we had scedueled for the same night that FF was doing the screening of Babyface and Two Seconds. All sold out, one day only and a waiting list. I thought about bustin' a move on the hapless employee guarding the door as I passed to meet M+S in the other theater. But that would have been rude--for so many reasons!

I can see this endeavor is going to be a time gobbler--more later. (And the spell check isn't working.)