Don't Bastardize Me

pic: hurricanevanessa.com

The results are in. An actress has been selected to play the coveted (and decidedly not Hollywood) role of Lisbeth Salander in America's version of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Her name is Rooney Mara and I've never heard of her. This is a good thing.

I loved the book (which is Swedish) and reviewed the Swedish version of the film for AltDaily a few months ago. Noomi Rapace  was so perfect in the role in the original film, I already am having trouble imaginging someone else playing this role. Rumors were swirling for months it was going to be a variety of Hollywood starlets, girls too polished, pretty, and really--too sane to tackle a role like this and do it justice.

I'm still not convinced the US version needs to be made at all. Daniel Craig will be playing Mikael and Robin Wright will play Erika, so Hollywood's already repping pretty hard. I guess that's business, though. The story's potential to reach a larger audience than a Swedish indie film may, in the end, make it worth it for me.  

The Girl Who Played With Fire (aka Part Two) premiers this weekend at The Naro, so I will definiately be there...as should you in case us 'Mericans totally fuck this up.

Scenes

Went to Emmypalooza in Berwick, PA this weekend. Need lessons in how to have a local music scene?  This is a tiny town in the Poconos and they do it right.

PS: All pics by jESiO. Give me cred, yo.

Brooke & Kevin Show

Panic Switch

Clove

Panic Switch

Lifer

Clove

Lifer

The Red Line

Lifer

Clove

Panic Switch

Miss Fizz

I just finished Zelda by Nancy Milford. A billion (felt-like) page biography of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott and original flapper fiasco. I read the book out because I felt I owed it to her. I've heard of her my whole life. I knew she was supposedly beautiful and she died in a psychiatric hospital. I'd read A Moveable Feast (which I am now re-reading post-Zelda to compare), where Hemingway blames her for all Scott's woes. I'd read Great Gatsby (many many times) and likened her to Daisy as I'd been told to do. Now that I've been blogging for a while, I realize she fits some sort of mold in the females I thought I looked up to and I wanted to find out if that's true.

Once, my great friend Jess Pleasant owned a Che Guevera shirt. She never wore it. She told me she had to read his biography first and really decide if she should. You can't like someone because they're on a t-shirt.

Or because they're Daisy Buchanan. Or because you already like Patti Smith and Courtney Love.

Are they people or are they pop art? Let's find out.

Having already been familiar with Milford's writing style via her excellent biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, I was okay with long passages devoted in very scholarly English-journal fashion to the writing of both Fitzgerald's--as well as how their place in culture and setting influenced their art and vice-versa. In fact, Zelda began as Milford's graduate thesis at Columbia. As a fan of language, especially Scott Fitzgerald's, this kept me pretty happy. As a non-literary nerd, you'd be okay to skip some of the passages that sound like an English paper and continue on when activities are taking place (Zelda's suitors, her swimming, his drinking, their marriage counseling sessions--lots of insider information here).

Milford is kind to her, which is appropriate when the final page is read and one sees how terribly sad her existence was. She's more Yoko than Yoko ever was. But not conniving. Her sickness worsened from 1930 until first Scott's death a decade later, and her's in 1948. The 1920s could have been her decade if they were a different decade. The literary world wasn't ready for a woman like her and (wildly) Milford shows over and over again how most of what we all love in the writing of F. Scott Fitzgerald was really a combination of the two of them. They collaborated on many writings. Scott pulled pages upon pages from her diaries directly into his novels with no credit to her. Often, she wrote short stories for national publications completely on her own and they were published under F. Scott Fitzgerald because his name brought them more money.

Muse is too tiny a word for what this woman was. She was a kinetic force of creativity when, coupled with the elaborate-yet-raw emotion her husband could evoke, erupted into a large part of the 20th Century American literary canon. They were chemistry on more levels than any husband-wife or artist-muse relationship I've ever read about.

She was talented. Yes. But was she capable on her own? My takeaway is no. Her writing on its own has some of the best imagery available. You look at a picture when you read one of her sentences. You see it vividly. Character development, however, was nothing to her, which is where Scott really took over. I am drawn to her story and in the end, repelled by her. All the qualities in myself--the qualities I dislike about certain artistic friends of mine--the spattering of a million ideas, the prep, the hype--the laziness at execution  which kills the whole shebang. She excelled in that detriment.

Zelda was diagnosed with schizophrenia. While excuse isn't the right word to use when faulting her lacks, it does give her leeway regarding the downfall of Scott Fitzgerald and the reputation she has grown to enjoy fifty-plus years later. In the end, I find the entire chronology, and its romance and gore, tragic. I don't look up to her now. I don't see her as influential to a movement, but rather a posthumous product used to discuss one after the fact. I don't find her likable or inspirational. I love her like a sister, though.

Bite Me

pic: sepientia.com

Red Avenues

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mccullagh.org

Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk City I Scrape Through

pic: homedosh.com

This isn't a normal Saturday playlist. Last Saturday, though, I relistened to Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk again (for the millionth time--but the first in a while) and was drawn to the lyrics. It's been a poetic week over at AltDaily, FYI, so if you're into real literature, check it out. It's better than my scribbles. It's Pulitzer.

This post is an experiement in three parts.

1. Homage to existing art I love (Buckley--using his album as the base).

2. Poetry (Using lyrics from Sketches, I pare down to create a new poem).

3. Internet challenge (Each image was used from a Google search of the song title with no cheating)

The Sky Is A Landfill

pic: flickr

The storm has ripped the shelter

Of illusion from our brow

To snuff out the mind that moves

Moving with grace the men despise

And women have learned to lose

 

"Everybody Here Wants You"

 

pic: plfoto.com

 

I know the tears we cried

Have dried on yesterday

The sea of fools has parted for us

 

"Opened Once"

 

pic: photemera.blogspot.com

I once was open and one

With a travelling heart

Just like the fiction

Rushing in your riverbed

I am a railroad track abandoned

With the sunset

Forgetting

'Nightmares by the Sea"

pic: files.myopera.com

Beware the bottled thoughts of angry young men

"Yard of Blonde Girls"

pic: yard of blonde girls myspace

Through the yard of blonde girls

Through the river and the sea

Gold sharks glittering

A tree of white

Breaks the earth

The streets where Lola played

(yeah, this one is perfect as is)

"Witches Rave"

pic: deviantart

You tell me all the ways around my garden that you like

I float just like a bubble

I can't help from looking

Outside for a guarantee

"New Year's Prayer"

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Fall in light

Feel no shame for what you are

As you now are in your blood

Join us in the streets where we

Don't belong, don't belong
You and the stars

Throwing light

"Morning Theft"

pic: flickr

A kiss Goodnight from every

Stranger that I meet

True self is what

Brought you here

Friendship battered down by

Useless history

Unexamined failure

But what am I still to you

Some thief who stole from you?

A heart that beats as

Both siphon and reservoir

"Vancouver"

pic: chateaugranville.com

With lines of escape in my mouth

I'm your loan shark of bliss

As if we are pure in the rain of our contentment

As if I can think of this no more.

"You and I"

pic: bontalampas.blogs.friendster.com

You and I

Tears that dry on a rude awakened child

"Haven't You Heard'

pic: torontoist.com

Paranoia will write the world prayer

They read a list of all who cannot stay

Two cripples dancing

To the end we live

I am the ghost who comes and goes

And I hope I'll catch you

In the throws of one last look at the wonder

We had a birthplace in common

"Murder Suicide Meteor Slave"

pic: eraofcasualfridays.net

Not a trampoline of the freaks

"Back in NYC"

pic: acquiescetomusic.files.wordpress.com

As I cuddled the porcupine

He said I had none to blame, but me

You're sitting in your comfort

Who needs illusion

When you're out walking in the streets

"Gunshot Glitter"

pic: jeffbuckleygod

Be one with all you disowned in your young life

"Demon John"

pic: 3squadron.org.au

Dark is the city where the white girls walk by

Down below your eyes

How would you like to be the happiest man in the world?

Whose blistered paws Harvest cut

It takes place on a sunlit lace and the backbone broken

"Your Flesh Is So Nice"

pic: flickr

I take off my belt

Oh, I whip the staircase

Whip the staircase

"Jewel Box"

pic: artraart.com

Come closer, that bonfire holds his life like stones

Like sapphires in boxcars speeding towards the end

Like thieves, my bad luck grows

You left some stars in my belly

"Satisfied Mind"

pic: flickr

The wealthiest person is a pauper at times

Compared to the man with a satisfied mind