Day by the River, 2010

Presented mostly without comment, a sketch of Yesenia made earlier today, during our perhaps annual outing to Haverstraw Bay Park, right along the Hudson.  She was doing a watercolor of the river, while I drew her.  Maybe someone over on the Westchester side had a pair of binoculars and was drawing me at the same time.

I've been making an effort to have the majority of the drawings in this particular sketchbook be stronger work - which means, of course, that I'm moving more slowly through the pages.  It was inaugurated with the preparatory sketch of Bettina Richmond back in March, and this drawing is only on page four, so I clearly either need to draw more or care less about quality.

This particular drawing was made with my Pitt brush pens, a set of six, with three warm grey tones and three cool grey tones.  I'm still working out how to use them, trying to see if I can get both fine detail and also soft blended textures out of a single (and here's the important bit), clean drawing tool.  Probably not - the best tool for that job will likely always be graphite.  But I can hope.

D.

That Kind of Night

Fairly sizable pile of freelance stuff to work through over the next couple of days - after which, my schedule will be much freer.  At which point, my attentions will turn to the much overdue cleaning of the basement and general cleaning of the house.  Stand by.

D.

Like an Arrow

The weekend moved fairly quickly, even though not much of real consequence happened.  This is a good thing, no?  Yesenia and I went up to our favorite* mexican place, Café Fiesta, way up in Highland Mills.  We've been eating there since the earliest days of our relationship, after she moved out of her dad's house and up to stay at her mom's vacant condo.  When we were first looking for places to eat nearby, I suggested it but Yesenia was doubtful, repeating that her mom had thought it was mediocre.

Her mom was wrong.  It was great, and is still great.  It's probably a good thing that we don't live closer, or I'd eat there twice a week.

As it is, it's always a nice drive and I love the whole adventure routine of piling in the car, driving out the end of the Palisades and continuing on north into the mountains, hunting for the mexican.

When we got back, we set about removing the branch that had fallen in the back yard after last Monday's big storm.  I say 'branch,' here, but it was in all truthfulness the entire top half of a tree, which took down other massive branches on its way down, embedding itself it the ground and completely covering our shed - multiple heavy branches intertwined, impossible to move.  

Out came the ax.  I chopped it off at the trunk (well, the thickest part that had impacted about a foot into the soil) and then two of the larger branches higher up.  Shirtless, sweaty and with Guess sunglasses on as safety goggles.  I'll bet I was a sight, but I'm not sure if Yesenia got a picture, so you may be spared.

Thing is, the sheer volume of tree that had come down was far too much to fit on our curb, so I now need to see if the town will take away two consecutive loads - otherwise, it's back to several hours of chopping and carting off trees.  Perhaps this time, I'll man up and rent the chainsaw.  Chopping trees in August swelter is strictly unfun.

D.

*Well, at least it's my favorite.  But Yesenia does like it a lot.

So far out of left field, they had to build a new park

Third film by Richard Kelly (of Donnie Darko fame).  Not sure what I was expecting, going in - I knew most of the gist of it, the general expansions on Richard Mattheson's original story - which I'd already seen adapted on Twilight Zone, The Next Generation, or whatever it's called.  The basic setup of the original short story and the Twilight Zone version: a couple facing money problems is given a box by a mysterious stranger.  The box is small, with the only feature being a done covering a big red button on top.  If they press the button, they will be given a large sum of money and a total stranger will die.  The wife presses the button.  In the short story, the husband dies and the stranger explains that she never really knew he husband (groan).  The original adaptation ends with the mysterious stranger collecting the box and assuring the couple that it will be reprogrammed and given to someone they don't know.

Kelly's film version takes the Twilight Zone idea and runs with it.  Runs really, really, really far with it, since the button is pushed in the first half hour of the film, and all sorts of crazy - but surprisingly linear, considering the source - stuff happens after that.  Kelly has completely matured as a filmmaker, and he's probably going to have the career that M. Night Shaymalan keeps trying to lose.  Sure, The Box is full of a lot of the same goofy touches that made Donnie Darko kind of insufferable - in particular, the water imagery - and has one of the most over-the-top scores I've heard in a long time.  But the world it presents is interesting and textured (if not a 100% believable version of the 1976 when the story is set), the cosmology is tight and compelling, played out slowly and with building intensity.  Kelly manages to walk the fine line between the total obscurity of the plot in Darko and giving away so much that he spoils the spell that he's trying to weave (as in the director's cut of Darko, or so I've heard).  The film ends with many of the central questions only partly answered, and none of the answers are particularly heartening.

As a side note, this film is the most Twilight Zone-y film I think I've ever seen, right down to the morality tale aspect.

I completely get why this film failed to find an audience.  It builds with a vintage touch, paced like a 70's era slow burn, and the payoff is a small-scaled downer.  But if Kelly continues to display the gift for writing, pacing and structure that he shows here, I suspect his next film (if they give him another one, that is, as this only made $15 million at the box office on a $30 million budget) will find him putting it all together in a way that stays true to who he is as a filmmaker while actually being able to connect with a mass audience.

D.

Politics as Usual

I think that every time Obama signs a bill into law from now on: the house lights should go down, a single spot comes up on Biden, standing alone off to one side.  He looks up and whispers sotto voce (with a single tear sliding down one cheek), 'This is a big fucking deal.'

There is a pause of several, silent seconds, then the house lights come back up and everybody gets a pen.

D.

All Summer in Two Days

With just a few weeks remaining in the summer, I'm doubling-down on as much freelance work as I can, before school starts in the fall.  Consequently, I haven't really been able to do much of anything 'summery,' which is a drag, but as far as drags go, having too much work as opposed to not enough is the preferable drag by far.

Over the weekend, however, I was able to squeeze in a lot of summer activity into a very short time - as houseguest/day laborer, over the course of about 30 hours, I removed all the wiring from a 60-year-old garage, along with a partial plywood ceiling (storage area above the main floor), then put in a new ceiling frame, then went biking and swimming and collecting donations for a local arts group outdoor performance of As You Like It.*  And it's a testament to how tight my life is that spending eight hours sweating in a garage with a nailgun actually felt like a vacation.

The best part of the weekend was discovering that the mystery wire that came in through the concrete floor coupled with the feedline actually went down to a forgotten fallout shelter below the garage.  The shelter itself (accessed through a very small wooden hatch behind the garage) was a pretty sketchy place; a 5' diameter piece of corrugated piping, completely in darkness, with about 6" of ground water in the bottom.  The mystery wire was there as suspected as suspected, coming into the shelter over in the corner, coiled slackly around a metal rod, with some kind of nut locking off the end, waiting to be hooked into whatever sad little light was brought down there right after the apocalypse.

Bear in mind that the space (and the wire) had been unused and untouched for almost 60 years, and that the wire was live the entire time, until I finally cut it off at the source.

Yesenia missed all this fun, opting to stay at home with bronchitis.  She's crazy.

D.

*Longtime passengers of the Rambler may recall an earlier vacation with the same play in similar circumstances.  Something about my summer vacations always seem to end up with outdoor performances of As You Like It.  Is there something about this play in particular that lends itself to lawns at sunset?

The Subway Rambler Presents: Medical Mysteries

My week?  My week was fairly ordinary, if you discount the 48-hour dual birthday party* that ate up the entire weekend.  The week of someone I love very much, on the other hand, was profoundly... I'm going to go with the word 'hardcore,' since 'Extreme' makes it sound more like it was on purpose, and likely sponsored by Mountain Dew, or Doritos.  Or Mountain Dew flavored Doritos, which actually do exist, in the face of all logic or good taste.

Anyway, pretty much almost everybody who reads this blog already knows that Karl - also in the face of all logic and good taste - was hit by a stroke Tuesday around noon.  The one thing he did display was good timing, as it happened right in the middle of a workday, while he was talking to a customer at the Apple Store in Stamford.  Which is, I have to say, about the best possible scenario you can find yourself in when the medical emergency demon comes gunning for you, short of actually already being at the hospital.  I plan to spend a lot more of my time hanging out at malls, being the hypochondriac that I am, just as a precaution.

 After a brief life-saving dalliance in Stamford, Karl was brought to Columbia-Presbyterian.  There, apparently to suffer not just the drawn-out shock of what had happened, but also everyone's attempted jokes about why it happened. (My own entry: there are easier ways to avoid having me yell at you).

As I mentioned to Karl when I visited on Wednesday night, this was my fourth official trip to this hospital. The first was my birth (which also included my circumcision, so it probably wasn't all fun and games); the second was to visit my high-school friend during his somewhat lengthy psoriasis treatments; the third was when my step-sister was being treated for melanoma, and now Karl with a decades-early stroke.  At this rate, I'm not looking forward to my next visit, you know?

I'll leave the bulk of the story for Karl to fill you in on when he returns to blogging - apparently, typing and all sorts of things like that will be therapeutic.  And, for once, so will masturbation.

Karl has found himself in the unlucky position over the last few years of being my primary artistic collaborator - so I'll confess to some selfishness when I wish him a speedy recovery.  But he has the benefit of an army of friends and loved ones wishing the same for far more altruistic reasons, so hopefully he'll forgive me my own lapse in logic and good taste.

D.

*Not one, but TWO parties for Jim's 40th.  Long story.