submarine. comfortable shoes.
Macaroni and Cheese and Richard Ayoade. The only things in the world that consistently help me beat the blues. The Euro’s all very blasé about the former, but the latter he loves – especially since the trailers for Submarine, Ayoade’s directorial feature debut, started surfacing. It’s all very Jean-Luc Godard and, you know, it’s Moss, so it’d be hard not to rock. Even harder still because Joe Dunthorne’s novel, upon which the movie is based, is pretty stellar. It doesn’t hurt that Alex Turner did the soundtrack. Or that it reminds me very much of Flynn.
The Penguin Blog: A Guest Post by Joe Dunthorne
disparate images. didion.
Mother on the Moors
Sandburg’s Sink
Brethren Baby
We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in the consulate. The man with the candy; will lead the children into the sea. We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. – Joan Didion
galifianakis girls
I’ve decided to run a half marathon with my sister. The Euro says it’ll be a good long-distance bonding experience but all I can think, when I think of my sister and me doing anything athletic, is “BUDDY FILM” and how I’ll be like Zack Galifianakis and how she’ll be like Robert Downey, Jr. How I’ll be the chubby comic relief to her tall, dark and handsome. Except, not exactly, because I’m way funnier than Galifianakis* and she’s way shorter than Jr.
We may fly Flynn in to document the whole thing because is a Buddy Film really a Buddy Film if no one’s there to see it? And because other than that one photo of us feeding each other corn, this is the only one we’ve ever made together.
*I just totally made that up.
pancake day spring clean
We decided on Cracker Barrel at noon and I ordered the “Kid’s Pancakes” because it’s Shrove Tuesday – Pancake Day. When you’re in the American South trying to follow an English tradition what this means, essentially, is instead of a nice crispy pastry you end up eating an entire kind-of-apple-pie, complete with whipped cream . I wont go on about the ridiculous portion size – on the CHILDREN’S MENU – because I ate it all but I will say it was the beast that broke the camel’s back.
My Lenten list:
– I understand the need to network. But my priorities are elsewhere at the moment. Eliminating Facebook would free up as much as an hour a day.
got my feet, got my toes, got my liver…
Flynn,
I’ve always loved Nina. Even when I was nine years old and had never heard her name or saw her face and thought she was a man. So, it was always gonna be awesome, because it’s Nina. About halfway through I started thinking, because that’s what I do, “So, what does it say about Flynn and her life right now, that this brings her to tears?” Trying to be all psychoanalytical and unfeeling because it wasn’t moving me to anything other than the norm. Then it kicked in. The tears. And the happy dance. The pure gratitude and joy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Buffy
Buffy,
I watched this on DVD earlier and was awestruck, and tried to describe it to myself in my head. I think she understood pain, and she didn’t give a shit about making it pretty, because suffering isn’t pretty. Thinking of what she sang about makes me think of something Cormac McCarthy said to the effect of ‘any writer who doesn’t write about death is just kidding themselves.’
I guess
Or think
She defies description.
Flynn
i’m asleep. that’s what i am.
“I’m asleep. That’s what I am. I’m always asleep.”
My grandmother has dementia. I spend my weekends with her. On Sunday she had a pensive moment and when I asked her if she was ok she said “I’m asleep. That’s what I am. I’m always asleep.”
She looked so sad and so done with caring, it broke my heart.
My grandfather, a stoic man, saw it and saw me reacting badly to it and sat down beside her and took her hand in his and this is what he said:
“You know, when you love somebody it don’t get old and fade away when you do, or when things change. I love her more now than I ever have. I fell in love with this little girl the first time I laid eyes on her. I was twelve years old and if you would have told me then that I’d ever love anybody more, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I do. I love her more. Now. And that’s the truth.”
I cried. Because that’s just what I do.
