BAMBI

This will be my second time trying to get through this film. I has made me wonder why some women want to be called Bambi. I was acquainted with one once. The music is really getting on my nerves. What is it about this time period (the fifties in Hollywood) that's so annoying?

I borrowed this film from a spiritual friend. I suppose I'm waiting to see what uplifting message I'm going to get from this.

Once, again, I missed San Francisco's version of Berlin's Love Parade. What was my problem? I don't like that it's in CIvic Center. Everything I've gone to there (besides political rallies) has been weird for me. About five years ago I played guitar outside at the Medical Marijuana celebration in the flea market section of Civic Center. What's the difference?

I'm just making up excuses. It was four hours of dance that did it to me. But last night I saw some extremely practiced dancers at Fort Mason. The ensemble is a collaboration between Chitresh Das (Kathak pandit) and Jason Samuels Smith, a really talented tap dancer at the beginning of his career. To dance tap with Kathak speed and rhythm is really marvelous. I gained a great respect for tap dancers.

It was cool, though. I got to speak with Chitresh Das after the question and answer period after the show. I asked him how it is for him to dance Kali, to tell stories of Kali with dance. She is an enigmatic goddess for sure. He answered that he is from the city of Kali, Kolkatta. Someone just mentioned to me that his friends are in Kolkatta now.

Anyway, the question is: do men also has a Kali nature? I believe they do.

Housing and html

It's been a while since I've looked at the craigslist housing stuff for San Francisco. Somehow I knew I would be shocked, and I was. Places in certain neighborhoods of the city have gone up at least $500 for the same thing back in the summer. It's too scary. Somehow I don't know if I want to go through the being-the-new-roommate thing. But I would have to be anyway, since this house is so different and the way it's set up I can't hear anyone upstairs. My housemates I've been looking for places with I hardly hear at all and they me. What if we all lived on one floor? That would be a new living situation to consider. But I do know these guys. It's soo hard!!

Today I spent all day reading the html book. It's not really hard, but it will take practice. I don't intend--nor can I--learn the intricacies of this with the amount of time we have. We spent alot of time on Photoshop--our self portraits. This program does not require that much time to get some basic stuff out. Some people do know html already. They didn't even come to class! That's how the Photoshop should have been. But I'm having fun with the project, even though visually I'm keep things very simple!

Thank God for FAMILY GUY

Adam West plays the principal of Quahog High. His is the funniest character of the show. He was on recently as the mediator in the dispute over Petoria, the country Peter had established within Quahog. This reminded me of the Peter Sellers' film THE MOUSE THAT ROARED about a country which wants to be taken over--and taken care of--by the U.S. It's not a direct connection, but both FAMILY GUY and Peter Sellers' films are high on my list of comedic products of genius.

Today was considered--according to the calendar--as the first day of Fall. I wish my friend had called earlier about celebrating the equinox with candles and meditation tonight. It's cool. I have homework for a class tonight to do and I had a good time while out to dinner and walking around in the lower Haight tonight. I hadn't hung out there for a long time. It was actually not windy! I used to live in this neighborhood, and not a lot has changed, really. There's a cheaper Indian/Pakistani food place there now besides Indian Oven.

Cafe International was happening today with live jazz and blues fusion. Life store had all the lovely scents they've been making for a long time... I bought "Violet." Maybe it reminds me of the time I spent early September up north near Klamath about 9 years ago. I've got to get out of the city more!!! On Friday night, some people on Valencia had plants and some others a carpet of grass with plants strewn out into the street. I thought Friday was Fall equinox. Nevertheless both days are viable emblems of transition. Time speeding by. Days are shorter. When we have a heat wave in the middle of the week, it will actually feel like Fall equinox in San Francisco for me.

YOU, ME AND DUPREE

There is a tendency to admit--after the fact--that a film had something moderately interesting to think about. This week I watched MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 3 and YOU, ME AND DUPREE. The choice to watch these movies lay with friends; I didn't select them. It's weird, because I had told one of my friends that I wasn't into action, suspense and dumb dialogue films. But as soon as I got over there, MI 3 was on cable, and my friends were watching it. They had organized a "movie night" that was really just a viewing of what was on tv on their high definition, surround sound video system.

I actually saw the first MI with Tom Cruise back in the nineties. While I was watching MI 3, I kept thinking about how I had dragged my friend who had a Ph.D. from Harvard in anthropology to this droll film. She watched it, but she made no comment afterward. I just tried to pick out the actors I liked in the film (Lawrence Fishburne, Ving Rhames and the Belfast actor whose name I can't recall. In fact, he and an English actor were the only Europeans in this very American-Hollywood-patriotic marvel of a film.

The actors in YOU, ME AND DUPREE saved it for me, too. Actually, I only like Matt Dillon. Kate Hudson has shown that small breasts, thinnish lips and very small breasts can be a part of a beautiful Hollywoodish young actress. Her acting itself, though, is flat to me. Matt's was very flat. He's best as New Yorker. Playing an LA-style character is just not him. It's like he's from another country, and everyone is less self-conscious.

The peroxide-headed actor, Owen Wilson, is just not funny. He's not even cute. How did he get into films, I wonder? He's one for whom the Stanislavsky method really has paid off.

There are marriages between man and woman in both of these films. Another common occurrence in each film was the union of a man at least 12-15 years older than the woman. The difference was subtle, because Cruise, Matt Dillon and Owen Wilson are all boyish, though two are over 40. Of course, all of these actors have had their share of plastic surgery. I was looking forward to watching a thought-provoking film. But all I got were two films that stated that real love is dependent upon how good one looks.

The University of Utopia.

Bro Jud is such a trip. I hung out with him this weekend. He truly has affected many people with his ideas and collectives. Look in Wikipedia for polyamory. Jud and his commune mates came up with this term.

Jud showed me some literature that he wrote in 1979, years after the commune was founded in the Haight. The article I found most interesting concerned the 'University of Utopia." It's taken from the black/white pamphlett entitled "Utopian Eyes."

It begins:

The work of George Gurdjieff and Peter D. Ouspensky is worth following up with the creation of a vanguard school for the study of human behavior...In my opinion, one has to arrive at the tenth dimension of love before one can attain the fifth level of consciousness. This brings us back to Gurdjieff and Ouspendky. One should read their writings to get a clear picture of the first four levels of consciousness. Then one can begin to grasp the conception of the fifth level, which involves thought transference via the attainment of altruistic love..."

To be continued...

Cheval De Frise and Derron Brown

Derron Brown is a psychological illlusionist. When he was a child he fantasized about turning the head of the kid in front of him. To me, Derron Brown has a psychological profile that is quite interesting. He is by no means unintelligent. There is a hyper-conscious ferocity about this person. He does not claim to a psychic. I watched some videos of his shows this evening. I want to watch the episodes in which he takes on a psychologist and, in another, an advertising designer. Derron Brown's world is so Orwellian--yet psy-fi.

Tonight I also had to listen to some heavy guitar music. Cheval de Frise is from Paris. There is a steel-string, amplified guitarist with an eccentric drummer; there is no singer. I bought this cd when I lived in my other house in Bernal. I use to shop alot at Aquarius Records on Valencia. The cd was recommended to me by one of the people working there. I had said I wanted European metal of some kind. I wonder what they would sound like with a singer--there songs have many and complicated changes in them. They are hardcorecollagerock.

Nichts zu sagen.

It really helps to a language that no one around you knows. My Spanish is pretty bad, but I can understand when someone is talking about me. I think I know French better, but I remember two women talking in French together so fast that I didn't get much. For some reason I studied German in high school. I finished German I in one semester and German II the next one. I even took it at the university, reading Goethe's Faust and Jung.

My favorite writer in German is Rainier Maria Rilke. I remember talking to someone from an online meet and greet session about Rilke. Why did he have to be so effete?

Meanwhile, when I'm really angry, I'll not swear--but I will talk to myself in German. Sometimes I call people names--they usually revolve around what kind of animal they look like to me.

Ich bin sehr canzada esta noche.

The Adobe Ilustrator and all the fun one can have with it/him.

My course in Multimedia has led us from Photoshop CS3 to Ilustrator 2.0(or whatever--we'll see how I do on the tests!?!). Both are part of the Adobe Suite. Now, I have a problem with this series. The layer images should be visible for easy access. My instructor didn't know how to get the layer image bigger. It is not even the size of my smallest piece of toenail.

Meanwhile, I was working on a very complex design, not really paying attention to my layers and paths and what was on top of what, but finally, my image I really wanted the machine would not save, noting that the file was corrupted. What could that mean, I thought??? Perhaps I should not have even attempted all the stuff I was trying to do. I took bitmap images and put them in this vector-based program. I spent 20 minutes working on the colors in a photograph of a painting of Ganesh.

My teacher did not know the name of Ganesh. He's really into sci-fi and whatever. But then, maybe he has a point: Ganesh could be called Vishnu or to have Vishnu-like qualities, couldn't he?

Tomorrow I have to get up early for work. The music teacher erased my scheduled supervision system for tomorrow off my white board when I was out of the class. That means I'll have to get up earlier...or not!

Celebrity SKin + APOCALYPTO

There was a band in San Francisco, kind of a metal/glam band, called Celebrity Skin. I met some of them in the late eighties when they were around. In any case, I bought a three cds for $1.50 at the Senior Center thrift store. I got Blur, House of Pain, and Hole. The Hole cd is entitled Celebrity Skin. It is all full of words about Los Angeles, the place of celebrity skin, plastic surgery and generalized superficiality.

I'll bring them to work tomorrow. Lately my day has gone by better when I listen to new cds, especially ones to be played loud. The past two weeks I was listening to Morrissey. Now it'll be House of Pain!

Meanwhile, I watched most of the (painful) scenes from APOCALYPTO. This film was a complete disaster. A very complex civilization is made out to be the Egyptians or present-day America...full of slavery, lack of justice, and overdone violence. Please do not watch this film. It is an abomination. It's worse than LASSIE. People who understood the mechanism of time couldn't be sentimentalized, thoughtless dogs--as they are portrayed in this film.

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).

The state of the San Francisco rental market.

Back to this topic again: why are all these landlords so greedy? Everybody uses craigslist here to find places to rent. Consequently, if a place is truly great for the money, 50+ people will show up for the open house. I don't know why, but more and more people are moving here again. I saw a place in the upper Haight last week, and two guys just out of college were telling the landlord that one of them had a job and the other one had enough savings to give the landlord 5 times the rent in advance. Everyone has a right to live here, and there is no question about that.

But someone put on craigslist tonight a large paragraph on the topic of landlords who advertise one bedrooms + another room which turns out not to be a legal bedroom and charges over $1000 each for these two supposed bedrooms. AND, what used to be a low-rent area like the excelsior or the bayview has now become equal with trendy areas like the Mission and Noe Valley. It is hard for me to believe that people are paying so much money for places that are in dangerous areas.

I saw a house in the Balboa Park area which is quite humble and rumbles with cops all the time. I used to have to drive through there to get to my job as a teacher of 8th grade English. It was an area of the city, since I'd only lived in the Mission, Haight and South of Market areas, I'd never seen before. When I went out to look at this house, I thought the rent was still over-priced because of the area. The rent was $1700. for a small three-bedroom house. I know there are people paying $1000. or less for a good neighborhood and equal amount of space. It's because rent control still works for some people--yay!

Unfortunately for me, my landlord sold my house I had rented in 1994 for $850./month. This was a whole house with a huge bedroom upstairs and a massive one downstairs. We paid $425/month in rent. By the time I was forced to move out, the rent was increased to $560. or something like that. The other night I spoke to someone who's been living under rent control for 20 years in Bernal Heights. I told him that he couldn't imagine how lucky he is. The author of the craigslist blurb about the inflated rents and demands of landlords in San Francisco said he was moving to India. Now, there's a thought.

LA ARDILLA ROJA.

This is a very sexy movie--LA ARDILLA ROJA. It begins with a scene of a tall, thin man with dark, longish hair kicking a railing high above the sea rocks. He can't get himself to jump to into the abyss. Instead, a person on a motorcycle crashes into the railing and the two of them fall, fortunately, to the sandy part that separates the road from the abyss. The motorcyclist is a woman, we find out from him, as he gazes into her eyes which are the only distinguishable body parts under her motorcycle gear. He says her eyes are a "tangled blue," but they are actually brown.

She says she can't remember anything. Where is she? What is her name? He is happy to her that her name is Elisa, the same name as his ex-girlfriend who broke his heart. She is ok with this, and the two of them have a hot love affair that is quite unusual because the camera does alot of the work to make this happen. There are many shots of just their eyes and faces looking for each other. He is a famous Spanish rock star from the band called Las Moscas, The Flies. He wears a t-shirt with just his face on the front.

That's enough for this movie. You'll have to rent it to find out more. It won many awards at Cannes in 1993.

Other people's parents and I KNOW WHO KILLED ME.

No one knows what horrible experiences you had with your own parents. NO problems? NO problem. But for those of us who know otherwise, the parents who were not even the slightest bit hippy or were first generation Irish-American or Republicans presented their children with MANY problems. This isn't the place for me to talk about my parents. But this evening I met one of my housemates' parents--his father, specifically.

My housemate's father, is, in many ways, a freak. Just what that means, I'd rather let Derrida figure it out. Meanwhile, this man had the look of someone seen on the streets many times who is not receiving proper psychiatric care. This man has absolutely no social intention. He has never worked. I know that sounds like the privileged class, but, hopefully people will all want to give back to the community who can.

This man really surprised me when he cupped his left hand and patted the outer edge of my upper arm near the shoulder and said, "Thanks for taking care of my son." Sensing the obvious, I said "We're friends." My friend said he could take care of himself. Then, the freak father said, "She's a nice lady...I just wanted to thank her."

It's too bad that this freak father, Mr. Irish-American father, couldn't really control himself. He is the ultimate co-dependent, saying shitty things to me to try and control his son's feelings. Trying to bring "Reality"--in his own negative way--to the fore.

Enough about him. Let's talk about Lindsay Lohan's father in I KNOW WHO KILLED ME. Poor Lindsay's father had separated her from her twin sister at birth. This father kept the secret from the mother. In many scenes, Lindsay gets her right fingers chopped off. She also does pole dancing. But, back to the father--he isn't the one who chops off her fingers, in case you want to pay to raise your thinking-ability quotient enormously.