jean9

• the kid kept calling me taylor (slipped once in a while by calling me jean)
• the kid kept farting and scratching his hiney. when asked if he needed to poop he always said no, but when he went to pee, he ended up pooping. a lot.
• the kid kept attacking me saying, “sharks like to eat jeans”
• the kid said he doesn’t celebrate christmas and gets no presents
• except he told me he got new crayons for christmas (he was using them to color his new activity book)
• when reading stories, he does not let me read… he flips the page before i finish and just asks questions based on the pictures and i basically make up stories bc i myself don’t know what’s going on half of the time
• the kid kept asking me to put his stuffed dolphin under my shirt to look pregnant
• i asked him to do it with me. he declined. i declined. he insisted.
• i finally put it under my jacket (after much negotiation—he wanted me to put it under my shirt, against bare skin) and his parents walked in.

givemesomethingtoread:

In my time running this website I’ve discovered, rediscovered, and otherwise enjoyed the works of various writers I might not have in other circumstances. Among my favourite discoveries this year was John Jeremiah Sullivan, who I’ll leave it to James Wood to introduce, from his review of Sullivan’s latest collection of essays, Pulphead:

He seems to have in abundance the storyteller’s gifts: he is a fierce noticer, is undauntedly curious, is porous to gossip, and has a memory of childlike tenacity. Anecdotes fly off the wheels of his larger narratives. In a touching piece about the near-death of his brother (who electrocuted himself with a microphone while playing with his band, the Moviegoers, in a garage in Lexington, Kentucky), Sullivan mentions, in passing, “Captain Clarence Jones, the fireman and paramedic who brought Worth back to life, strangely with two hundred joules of pure electric shock (and who later responded to my grandmother’s effusive thanks by giving all the credit to the Lord).” Any reporter can be specific about the two hundred joules. But the detail about Captain Jones giving all the credit to the Lord, while a small thing, suggests a writer interested in human stories, watching, remembering, and sticking around long enough to be generally hospitable to otherness.

You can buy Pulphead from Amazon right now, but in the meantime I’ve collected some of my favourite John Jeremiah Sullivan essays here, in no particular order, for your enjoyment.

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wow this guy came to our writing class as a guest and… gave us advices. gonna read some of this now

• horrible bosses: the jokes, characters, everything about this movie got on my nerves. can’t believe we finished it
• 12 angry men: henry fonda +_+ love that it was low budget. and the guy who does the voice for piglet was one of the 12 angry men! and the only one alive today…
• fast, cheap & out of control: my film professor’s recommendation. need to study morris’ beautiful use of interviews and b-roll. also the way the film flows and makes sense out of basically what seems like chaos at first—and hits on what gary calls the “human mystery” pow! it was so good
• following: a film noir by christopher nolan about a man who started following random strangers bc he was 1. bored and lonely, 2. found people interesting, 3. curious where they were going, 4. needed things to write about bc he was a writer. i’m so so into human psycho-philosophical intellectual and emotional blah idk what to call it. intriguing, edgy, antsy, dark, cerebral
• couples: korean romantic comedy. INTERESTINGly enough, it used a similar way of story-telling as following kept going back and forth to reveal something more. kept it interesting. more of a comedy than a romance, but that’s okay!
• waiting for superman: forever angry at the “adults” and AFT. michelle rhee is my hero
• dreams (pbs nova): a documentary about dreams. kind of covered everything i learned about sleep disorders from my psych classes. made big assumptions about what it all means based on very little evidence. whatever.
• the high cost of living: i really like zach braff. a story about a drug dealer and a pregnant lady and their relationship. interesting, huh
• case 39: a horror film about a haunted girl. typical… but i trusted that renee zellweger wouldn’t be in a bad film and i was right. SO GOOD. watched it with fam friends on the ski trip. sort of a tradition to watch a horror film. we rarely pick a good one, but this was SO SCARY. thank you, netflix.
• insidious: another horror film about a haunted kid. lol
• the girl on the bridge: b&w french film with vanessa paradis. beautifully ridiculous
• page one: the decline of paper newspapers, changing faces of journalism… and the new york times. should’ve seen it at the full frame festival

Werner Herzog promised that he would eat his shoe if Morris ever completed Gates of Heaven (1978), which he actually did at the movie’s premiere. Les Blank’s short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980) shows the whole story.

feeling stuck bc qduke.com isn’t working

mom’s making super good smelling korean bbq marinade in the kitchen… and it’s killing me. it’s for the trip that’s in TWO WHOLE DAYS… so we’re not eating korean bbq tonight.

and the smell is killing me…

would you rather be able to smell (good food) but not be able to eat it or not be able to smell it at all (you still can’t eat it)?