Alison Bechdel is a genius. Always has been, as far as I remember. There is a perfection in her work, kind of like that Room Service short film I was raving about recently. I've been thinking a lot about perfection lately. Agnes Martin speaks of the "awareness of perfection" that we have in our minds. Not perfection as an external thing but the sense of perfection that we all know internally. Good stuff to ponder.

Oh, man... my little geek world keeps expanding. I don't even know where to begin. I'm overwhelmed by possibility!

At the same time, I've been looking a lot at the sublime work of Agnes Martin, who can safely be categorized as not just low-tech but no-tech.

A bit o' yin & yang for ya there.

Barf. I am so over this bullshit.

On to nicer topics. Have I ranted yet about how much fun I'm having in my sound class? It's quite invigorating to explore a whole new medium every once in a while... this week we learned about Max/MSP which is like geek heaven on a stick. After the teacher gave us a short demo of it, we all sort of sat there more or less stupefied by the sheer abundance of possibilities.

From the Dominican Republic (via swimming buddy Margo) comes this menu, listing, among many other things, Rangoon de Cangrejo, 6 in an order. Yikes!

Oh! At one of the blurred weddings last month I ran into an old friend I hadn't seen in, what, over ten years? She subsequently sent me a link to a friend of hers' website, saying I might like his work. Just now I went & sort of stumbled around in there, not quite getting it until lo! I came upon this brilliance, which made lightbulbs flash above my head & I got all excited, had to start blogging with Oh!, &c.

I know. "A friend of hers' website" isn't exactly proper writing, but you wouldn't blink if you heard someone say it. Would you now. I guess I could have said "Paul Chan's website" instead, since that's who & what it is. Coherence diminishing, blame it on the crabapple blossoms... I'm addled by beauty today.

I saw the Chinese restaurant movie last night, thanks again to the very sweet NAATA folks who set me up with a ticket. It was good, but it turned out that it wasn't really about Chinese restaurants... it was much more focused on issues of diaspora. Maybe the restaurant angle will develop more throughout the series. (There are two or maybe three more installments covering a few more countries.) I have now met two people besides me who seem to be obsessed with Chinese restaurants & are immersed in projects about them, & we all have such drastically different approaches to the subject, it's kinda fascinating. Cheuk Kwan (he's the filmmaker) is into the diaspora stuff, and Inspector Collector is all about the food. I'm not that into either of those things. Although of course there is overlap... shall I whip out another Venn diagram?

My vote for Best in Festival: Room Service by Junji Kojima. This deliciously fun, flawless 8-minute short seems to be making the festival rounds so you might have another chance if you weren't lucky enough to catch it last night. Every last detail was so lovingly, carefully thought out... perfection on a stick! Of course it doesn't hurt that the subject of packing a suitcase is so near & dear to my own obsessive heart.

On the other hand... [Warning: heavy grousing ahead!] Can I rant a little about my latest film festival pet peeve? You hand-held camera people (not all of you, obviously, but I'm not gonna name names either): would you please just *hold the shot*? Life moves; if you point the camera at it and just hold still, there will be plenty of action and motion. Don't worry about your audience getting bored. We have eyes that can and will look around at different parts of whatever is in your frame if you just give us a chance. You don't need to make your camera imitate the motion of your own eyeballs. If you must move, move at a slow or moderate speed. All this antsy zig-zagging and erratic swooping around only makes me seasick unless I'm sitting in the farthest back row.

Sorry. I know I'm more tired & grumpy than usual. But I'm stickin to my story!

Overall, though, an excellent festival again. How do they manage to keep doing that year after year? & the people are all so nice!

Have you noticed the crabapples are all exploding with blossoms? I'm so happy. Even though I'm tired & grumpy. You can be all those things at once, it's not that hard. In fact it seems to happen to me quite often.

Okay, that's enough of that.

It's all about my friends: This nice Florence Yoo interview has links to her excellent new album. Oriane Stender is showing her new Underwater Galactical Microscopic Outerspace Lifeform Units at Paule Anglim.

& me? I'm just trying to make it to the end of the week. It's like that sometimes.