Ana-blog

...reading the news and it sure looks bad….

That’s Joni Mitchell, possibly echoing the Beatles.  If you read the news today, oh boy, plane crashes, oil spills, Wikileaks and losing battles on every front.  It is like everything is seeped in filthy black oil – the plane wreckage, the birds, and Afghanistan are all drenched in the stuff.

Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, and Arizona.  Sarah Palin.

I’m overloaded.  I know it.  It’s starting to show up physically in exhaustion and a frozen shoulder.  All of my symptoms say the same thing.  Slow the frak down.

Luckily, there’s a cure for that.  Time to go un-digital.  Analog, baby.

It occurred to me at the Lomography store how incredibly satisfying it is to load a roll of film into one of those cameras.  They’re just little plastic boxes – they don’t have much going for them, really, but they also don’t stand in the way of your experience.  It’s very tactile, loading a roll of film.  You need to feel it slide in, you need to feel the sprocket click, you need to just know that it’s in place, because once you close that door, you don’t want to open it again, or you’ll fog part or possibly all of the film. 

Once you’ve shot it, it’s even worse – you have to unroll the film while it’s behind the door.  You have to feel that you’ve unlocked it, then feel that it’s rolling back and then feel your way to knowing that it’s finished.  Now if you open that door and it’s not all the way back in its case, you’ll lose your photos.

That's DJ Jedi spinning.  I think he won't mind I stole this pic off the web.

I first learned how to load, shoot, and develop film in my 5^th and 6^th grade class with teacher Marion Grief.  She just handed us all little cameras and out we went.  It’s something that stayed with me, made me more comfortable with those little boxes than with other machines.  It’s magic, but it's practical magic – magic you can see if you look carefully.

Analog is the slow food movement and vinyl and skateboards, it is taking a bath instead of tweeting, it is meeting a friend for a drink instead of texting.  It is going shopping instead of clicking and pointing for your next purchase.

Analog is taking a walk and noting the scents of each block, from lavender to rose, to too many dogs in one spot.  Analog is pen to paper. 

The language of love is analog, and I hope won’t ever be digital.

I’ve got nothing against digital – I love iTunes and I want a new computer and an iPod, I love the ability I have to be at home virtually anywhere because my laptop is my home and office and repository for all things me.

We just can’t forget we’re still people and our little chemical boxes seem to require us to periodically check in with our senses in profound and detailed ways.

Analog derives from a word meaning proportionate.  This may be a key signal of its effect on us as humans.  We didn’t mean to, perhaps, but when we went digital from analog, we may have lost our sense of proportion.  We simply spun out.

Like that roll of film, maybe it’s time to spin back in.  Very carefully.  You don’t want to ruin any memories.

Yum - 5th Edition

Apparently, no food this week!  Y'all know I went to BNV and that would be in here, but it got it's own blog.  Here we go:

Lomography Shop

Alfie took me to the Lomography Shop!  it was fantastically fun!

Before I left, I got rid of all my Polaroid cameras and my action camera.  I was sad.  But the film was getting super-hard to find for my iZone, Joycam and Spectra, and they were bulky and well, the Action Cam – I probably should’ve kept that.  Actually, I should have kept all of them.  : (

(This was my result from clicking "random photo" on the website.)

The Lomography Shop is an analague enthusiast’s dream.  Holgas, LCA cameras, Dianas and all the accoutrements, plus great pictures to look at, books to browse and ideas to “borrow”.  They sell film and they do processing!

Alfie signed up to do Street Team work and they loaned her a camera to take pictures! 

All I can say is, we want the Hello Kitty cam.  Both of us.  And there’s only one left.

p.s.  Can't find a website for the store, but it's on Santa Monica Blvd, in WeHo!

Outliers

By far my favorite of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, I read this book in 3 days.  I didn’t want to put it down.  The stories and the critical thinking and analysis that went into them are brain-absorbing.  The premise is fairly revolutionary – and yet completely observable in every aspect of daily life.  We say we are all connected, we talk about ripples in ponds and we understand quantum physics, but we still tell ourselves that lives don’t have context, that everyone has a fair and equal shot, that circumstances don’t make the man.  Gladwell applies all his journalistic skills here, as well as his deft storytelling, to force us to shift our perception.  It all rings shockingly true like cold water in the face; it’s as if he snaps us out of some collective delusion we know could never have been true.  Great book, great reading, great ideas, great basis for social change. 

His Girl Friday

I watched this on Hulu yesterday.  I was feeling glum and it seemed like just the thing.  His Girl Friday, directed by Howard Hawkes, starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell, based on Ben Hecht’s play The Front Page, is seventy years old.  Seventy.  Released in 1940.

It should be flat, it should be dull, it should be crotchety.  It’s not.  It is all relentless movement, whipping dialogue, minute character shifts, and truly funny bits.  The verbal sparring of Hildy and Walter, at a ridiculously fast clip, creates the energy that moves the story.  Sure there’s a plot – a convicted killer is about to be hanged and Hildy is about to marry somebody new – but it is a backdrop for the pure delight the characters take in tormenting each other.

Walter Burns would be unlikely as a hero today, while Hildy Johnson is oddly contemporary.  Walter’s not politically correct, makes no attempt to be nice to anybody, in fact, insults everyone, and doesn’t seem to have a moral bone in his body.  What saves him, apart from Cary Grant’s impeccable performance, is his dedication to winning in the form of getting the scoop, having the best paper, and just generally beating everyone at their own game.

Would I want to marry him?  Hell no.  But I want to see her marry him.  And that’s what matters.

There is a reference to “coloureds” at the beginning of the movie I never noticed before.  The reason giving for hanging the convicted man, Earle Williiams, is because he policeman he shot was “coloured” and the 200,000 votes are important to an impending election.  It makes the movie seem dated, but is also telling.  This play was clearly written in the 30’s with its references to Communism and its general demeanor.  Off the back of the strikes in New York City that integrated Harlem hospitals and created African American businesses in Harlem, and the work of Senator Adam Clayton Powell, we find out not only that it’s de rigueur for an African-American to be on the police force 70 years ago, but that the constituency believed in its own voice enough and had enough power to demand special justice.  He is not getting hanged because he shot a police man, but because the policeman was African-American.  I’m not sure I would condone the way it was handled, but the story and dialogue are not delicate nor are they politic.  However, the storyline itself is telling.