LA VIE EN ROSE & BECOMING JANE (or something like that)

Why does Gerard Depardieu have to be in every French film? He's like De Niro in that way, I suppose. His character got killed early in the film LA VIE EN ROSE. It's a story of the life of Edith Piaf. The person who deserves the most applause in this film is the actress who plays the quintessential Parisian singer. Of course, I'm forgetting her name right now. She goes from 20 to 40 very easily and sings in the French style like Edith P.

The film has holes in it--Edith P.'s bisexuality is only hinted at, her coming to be married is unexplained, the fact that when she was very young she bore a child named Marcelle and later fell in love with a French boxer (no, not a dog) named Marcel. How she kicks heroin is also not shown. Her life was so rich in drama, I suppose...hard to cover it all.

LA VIE EN ROSE played with BECOMING JANE, and English/Irish collaboration about Jane Austen's only "love," a young Irish lawyer named Tom. The scenes of Ireland are gorgeous. The two male actors who play her brother and Tom are quite attractive for fair-skinned men. Is it me, or does ripping off Antonioni English-style just not seem feasible? This film wasn't too boring, but only the Tom character really kept me watching. The actor had a lot of range and wasn't the least bit dull in that 18th century English stodgy way.

Bro Jud found out.

It had to happen some time. Last Saturday night Jud had me scheduled on a panel of speakers at the Patient's Cooerative. I was supposed to talk about his "Presmont Plan." Why he wanted me to talk about it, I don't know. I've never given him any indication that I understand much of the plan. When I asked him what he wanted me to say, he urged, "Say what your heart tells you to say."

So, I talked about love energy, of course. As far as anything else goes with his learning modules, and etc., I had no idea what to say about the plan.

Today I called Jud to tell him about something regarding the recording of the last show we did which was last week. He finally got around to telling me, "I don't think you understand anything about the plan." Bro Jud found out.

Now that I'm studying multimedia, I might get closer to finding out myself. But, for now, I don't know anything about the plan!

Love Energy, revisited.

Tonight I did the Bro Jud on Love Energy Show. How time has flown since I first saw this show on the San Francisco cable channel in 1996. Jud was always a wise man, a funny, weird, pervy wise man. The first time I saw the show, I didn't know Jud. I just saw the name of the show on the cable menu and thought, "'love energy...?' is this show about Venus and astrology? I need more love in my life..." There was this really insanely cool backdrop of psychedelic color bursts. Jud talked about dedicating the show to the 'world's greatest lover"--Italian porn star, Rocco Siffredi. I was laughing so hard at this.

The show this evening was dedicated to Yuri Kokoshkin, head of the Trident Group, a capitalist-paranoia surveillance thing from Russia about Russia. Jud did not explain why the show was dedicated to this guy at all. Then, he had me read from a book by D. Ikeda about the founder of the namyohorengekyo ideas. This was getting weirder. Thanks to a friend at Dreams of Kathmandu that I had the book by the Tibetan monk, Sakyong Mipham, Ruling Your World. It's a book about compassion for oneself and others. What a night. I got to rock out. These are my last days of freedom!!!!

The Spacey Rocker

Here's a picture of me on a night when I got to perform with my electric guitar. I played my songs I had with a band back in the mid-nineties called Martyr Mia. It was a really fun evening, but I remember that I was depressed. Just joking!!! Do I looked depressed in picture?

The reading training.

I don't know about the state of education these days. Teaching reading is one of the hardest things to do besides operating on a brain. I really admire Kindergarten through 4th grade teachers--they have the hardest job.

My students have severe disabilities. There is one who seems to be more speech delayed. He was on the verge of making the leap from sounding out letters (phonemes) to blending sounds to make meaning.

We got there at 8:30, took a break at 10 for 10 minutes, had really good lunches they provided from 12 to 12:45, worked until 2:45, and then we had homework. There was only one night which had a lot of homework to it. It took me an hour and a half to do!!! The article was on metacognition and a priori knowledge...kind of esoteric.

Thursday night I was panicking, because they told us that if we didn't finish the five days, we wouldn't get paid for any of it!! I finally fell asleep close to one o'clock and arrived 35 minutes late the next morning. Fortunately, if we were late less than an hour, all we had to do was do make-up work during lunch.

I don't know how I'm going to get up for work every day two week from now!

One day and two nights of freedom.

There is tonight and tomorrow night and the day tomorrow left until I have to "work" toward some teaching goal. I'm going to a weeklong seminar on teaching reading. Now, remember, my students do not often recognize letters. The reason why I'm going to this thing is two-fold: the district wants a transitional class for students with more skills or they just want to say they have a functionally academic classroom for students with moderate to severe cognitive delay and autism.

I have a space on MySpace.

I'm such a space. I belong on MySpace, however I lack the technical skills to make my space reflective in some way of myself. I've seen others who know how to create web pages do theirs very creatively. Hopefully after I take my Multimedia class at City I'll be more technically-minded and adept...not inept.

My name on the myspace is charuta, so I think the address is charuta@myspace.com, but I have been wrong before.

Spending money on clothes has become an obsession.

"Obsession for women"--shopping. Last night I wanted to see the British punk band THE SLITS. They were playing at the Independent which is on Divisadero. I used to go to that place when it was a small blues venue. I don't know what my problem was last night. No one wanted to go with me nor had heard of THE SLITS. So, I sat at home and looked them up on the website of the club which referred me to the band's own website.

I hadn't seen a picture of the singer, Ari-Up, in over twenty years. I remember someone having told me that she had gotten involved with Organization for Krishna Consciousness--or whatever they're called. In the pictures on the website, she was wearing a turquoise-ish green/blue hoodie with matching pants. The song she was talking about was "Shoplifting at Selfridges." This is one of her new songs. Since she's the only original member of THE SLITS playing out these days, she can make up a new song with band.

But I thought it was both weird and still cool that she shops and shoplifts (which I remember many punks back in the day doing). I'm worried that shopping at thrift stores--and anywhere, for clothes, in general--has replaced the good clean relaxing fun of reading a book, lying on the grass in the sun (umm, what sun?), or volunteering at Amma's kitchen (something I still must do this summer).