This “space” is about my mom and her journey as she birthed a hard-shelled sea turtle into a fighting El Nino storm near a redwood forest and off the coast in California. It is also sometimes about exploding hearts, landmines, jihad as a moral struggle, the Perfection of Wisdom in One Letter, and modern camping techniques. Look beneath the shell.
It says, “Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.”
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.
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!
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.
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!
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.
At night, I cannot sleep and I think that maybe it is result of alien abduction, or rather, lack of alien abduction, or perhaps , more clearly, fear of alien abduction. Blogtime says it’s 12:25 PM, but that is on UTC time. Really, it is 4:25 AM.
I finally got video chat to work! Paul is not into embracing his net identity. He is going for “zero visual confirmation” — he’s not ready for it and finds it scary. Sorry for outing you, buddy.
If you want to videochat with me, my SN is dearlingdarling (kept from when I was obsessed with that The Feelings song a few many years ago — I’ll upload MP3s when I get my server to cooperate)!!! I will await your green flashing light.
Also, have you seen Free Rice? I just guessed correctly that gynandromorph means hermaphrodite.