(Don’t) say anything

My sister is home, and with her francophileness and French New Wave obsession in particular, she reminds me of my own love for French pop and ephemera.

This video! This song! Anna Karina! Je t’aime…moi non plus (je t’aime) Serge Gainsbourg.

“Ne dis rien” was in the 1967 made-for-TV movie, “Anna” that Serge Gainsbourg wrote pour Anna Karina en particulier. Here it is in the movie, with Jean-Claude Brialy “singing” Serge’s parts.

Brialy and Anna Karina first made sweet screen love in Godard’s “Une Femme est Une Femme” — I first watched this film in a restored version at the Film Forum 4 or 5 summers ago while trying my hardest to avoid NYC hot-and-sticky syndrome by taking daily trips to the movie theater. I was in the city because I’d stuck around to take a class with an old, debilitated (in physicality but certainly not in spirit) visiting Hungarian astrophysicist (who, coincidentally, was in love with and obsessed with Anna Karina and would reference her in his discussions of galactic and stellar evolution, and of course, the big bang).

Here is Brialy interviewing Anna Karina (excusez-moi, mais sooooo cute) — FF to the end and see Serge extolling the wonder of Miss Karina.

My sister made a limited edition print last year of Anna Karina and her other “Une Femme est Une Femme” co-star, Jean-Paul Belmondo (I am a Brialy girl, but who can resist Belmondo???).

Also in “Anna”, Anna Karina does a version of “Sous le soleil exactement” — classic Serge formula, writing a hit song for a leading lady and then reinventing the song for himself.

SERGE = PARFAIT.

I think Anna Karina was the first lady that Serge ever dueted with. He followed up, naturally, with many sexy duets with young starlets (”Les Sucettes” avec France Gall, “Bonnie & Clyde” avec Brigitte Bardot, and of course “Je T’aime…Moi Non Plus” etc. etc. etc. etc. with Jane Birkin, professed love of his life).

Here is a clip in which Serge dances a similar dance with Jane B. as he does with Anna Karina in “Ne dis rien” above… except a little raunchier.

Cette entrée de blog est dédiée à Cynthia, merci pour les liens. Aller écrire ton essai!

P.S. Try playing (the super remix) all the videos in this post all at once.

Buy handmade!

I haven’t really done any sort of holiday shopping this season. I’m slowly phasing holiday shopping out (aka BROKE), but were I to make purchases, I’d buy handmade!

You can make the buy handmade pledge here: Buy Handmade — Make Your Pledge To Buy Handmade Goods. The NYT Mag this past Sunday did a huge piece on the handmade movement.

My dear friend Pam Garber and her collaborator Xenia Pachikov recently created a handmade tablecloth zine, KitchenWomenKnives, the first output from Empty Purse Publications. Many many hours of diligent hard work have been put into it. I implore you to check it out / read it / purchase it.

Once upon a December…

…I meta transformed into a community center surveillance camera. Output = blue light collection. Hello, GOOD December.

Can you feel the pressure?

Back west means spending QT with my mom. I sustained a bit of a knee injury a couple of weeks ago while moving stuff around for the project I was working on in New York. I must have been pumped full of adrenaline because I was able to ignore the discomfort for the most part. Yesterday, my knee started feeling stiff again. I tried to go see Dr. Besh, who fixed my wrist a few years ago when I had my big bad SUV-bike spill, but he couldn’t see me because I HAVE NO HEALTH INSURANCE. So instead, I went to see my mom, who stuck some needles into some pressure points in my arms and legs. I was positively squirmish.

Mama Su has just been invited again in 2008 to give acupuncture workshops in a small German mountain town on the Austrian border. I’m going to go with her and make a documentary about her healing powers. More on this later! 2008, bring it on!

Truck truck goose

Dudes, it snowed today in New York.  I can’t wait to go home to California to non-snow.  But check it, yesterday, I drove around the city in a big truck to run production errands for this project I’m working on (reason I am still, unexpectly, in this cold cold city — more on it later).  The best part of the day was that dear-to-my-heart Argentina homies Zoe and Julian came along for the ride.  We bumped to Hot 97 and made a truck stop at Taco Chulo.  I also visited Build It Green homies, almost backed into a gas fill tank, ran over a couple of curbs, and honked my way through SOHO.  What what what!  My mom called me three times today and I was too busy to answer.