Lars von Trier is an amazing film director.  And, like he says, he makes films that are like a rock in your shoe.  For me, those are the best kinds of films.

In 1991 I saw my first von Trier film, Zentropa.  This is way before I knew anything about directors; all I knew was it was playing at the Tivoli in Kansas City, only place around that played foreign and independent movies.  Zentropa is a powerful and moving film.  I felt crushed and devastated when I left the theater.

Many years later, Andrew introduced me to The Element of Crime, Breaking the Waves, and The Idiots.  One of our early dates was to go see Dancer in the Dark (starring Björk).  We rented a bootleg of The Kingdom from the indie video store in Salt Lake City (which lucky Andrew had seen in the theater when he lived in Manhattan).

I've watched Dogville (starring Nicole Kidman) several times.  This is one of my most favorite movies.  I could watch this 3-hour movie every day.

He wrote Dear Wendy, which was a great movie about teens and guns (not after-schoolish AT ALL).  I so totally want to be in a gang called the Dandies.  It was interesting to hear him talk about the movie and his own dislike of guns.  He actually did some shooting and learned all about guns for the movie.  I don't know it if was my imagination or not, but I detected a hint of excitement as he spoke about shooting target practice, in spite of his pacifism.

We were unable to see Manderlay in the theater because it never came out around here.  It's the controversial follow-up to Dogville (with Bryce Dallas Howard taking Nicole's role).  He has another movie planned for his American trilogy which is named Washington and planned for a 2009 release.  He has this to say about them, "Put my American trilogy together and you'll have one hell of a grim evening. And you will not be entertained at all!"

The most recent movie we've seen by him is Boss Of It All (which I highly recommend).  Oh, and I almost forgot the movie The Five Obstructions, a documentary he made with another film maker.

I like Lars, and, apparently, rocks in my shoes.

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty, but when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. -Buckminster Fuller

[photo taken 7/25/2007 in Philadelphia]

I've already gushed about Buckminster Fuller, but I've got him on the brain lately.  His exuberant belief in the ability of humanity to do good is something I (want to) share.  Which is probably why I dislike people so much, because they always seem to prove me wrong.

We drove by a blind person walking down the street once and I got to thinking.  Eventually (and, for Andrew, out of the blue) I said, "Andrew, they really should build a city for the blind where blind people wouldn't have to worry about getting run over by cars, and everything would be designed for them."  I went on and on about all the great things we could do for blind people.  He listened quietly ... and then I asked him what he thought.  After laughing (because, where the hell did that come from?) Andrew remarked that it would just be a place to take advantage of blind people. And he's right.  So now, when I have one of my (occasional) world-hugging moments, those moments when I think that we can all do good and live together peacefully, all Andrew has to do to snap me back into reality is sigh, roll his eyes, and say, "City for the Blind."

But I digress ...

I *love* that Buckminster made up words.  I *love* that he had ideas that he believed in and he pursued them even in the face of professional skepticism.  I *love* that he trusted himself and valued himself as much as he trusted and valued everyone else on Earth.  Buckminster Fuller is a warm spot in this yuck-tastic world.  He's the embodiment of my hope for myself that I can do something, anything, to make the world a better place.

I'm not in a position to build a City for the Blind (and to protect it's inhabitants), but I can do small things.  I hold the elevator when I see people walking into my apartment building.  I let people merge in traffic.  I pick up things that I see people drop and give them back to them.

This heat must have melted my brain, because my warm-hearted-ness is usually reserved for just a few people that I feel actually deserve it.

[photo taken 6/16/2007 in Philadelphia]

Alice Blue is a color that we use a lot on the web.  Andrew just asked me to look up the hex (#F0F8FF) and I discovered there's a Wikipedia article about it.

I'd assumed that Alice Blue had to do with Alice in Wonderland.  I just learned that Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Theodore Roosevelt's daughter, was known for wearing a gown of that color.  There was even a song in a musical about the "Alice Blue Gown."

I also just read the Alice Roosevelt Longworth article.  She kicked ass!

Oh, Wikipedia, how I love thee.

Once, when I was young, my Dad told me about Buckminster Fuller.  He seemed larger-than-life ... a super genius.  The more I learn about Bucky, the less that opinion changes.  He *is* a larger-than-life-super-genius.  I love a lot of his quotes.  This one has me thinking recently:

Very frequently I hear or read of my artifacts adjudged by critics as being "failures," because I did not get them into mass-production and "make money with them." Such "money making as criteria of success" critics do not realize that money-making was never my goal. I learned very early and painfully that you have to decide at the outset whether you are trying to make money or to make sense, as they are mutually exclusive. I saw that nature has various categories of unique gestation lags between conception of something and its birth. In humans, conception to birth is nine months. In electronics, it is two years between inventive conception and industrialized production. In aeronautics, it is five years between invention and operating use. In automobiles, it is ten years between conception and mass-production. In railroading, the gestation is fifteen years. In big-city skyscraper construction, the gestational lag is twenty-five years. For instance, it was twenty-five years between the accidental falling of a steel bar into fresh cement and the practical use of steel-reinforced concrete in major buildings. Dependent on the size and situation, the period of gestation in the single-family residences varies between fifty and seventy-five years.

I prefer to make sense.  I am doomed.

[photo taken 7/20/2007 in New York]

However weighed down, washed-up, bullied you may be, ask yourself regularly - and irregularly - "What can I risk again today?"

- Henri Michaux

[photo taken 3/20/2007 in Philadelphia]

I like Larry Fessenden. Larry is a writer, director, and actor from New York.

My first exposure to Larry was when Andrew and I first started dating. He really wanted me to see Habit. Andrew saw Habit around 1997 when he drove to New York specifically to see it at Village Cinema.

Habit is a vampire movie, but that isn't what is memorable about it. The movie makes you feel something, unlike most movies. Larry wrote, directed, and starred in Habit, which is why one critic called it, "The Wellesian tour de force of the 90's."

The next movie he wrote and directed, Wendigo, is amazing, too. The parent/child interactions in the movie are some of the most true-to-life I've seen in a movie. The little boy actor is amazing. Just like Habit, the horror story elements seem secondary to the emotional story of the characters.

Larry has also shown up in a lot of great movies we've seen over the years: Bringing out the Dead, Hamlet*, Session 9, Happy Here and Now*, and Broken Flowers (where he gets to punch out Bill Murray).

One day I was alone in New York standing at the corner of Lafayette and Bleeker waiting for the light to change. I saw Larry across the street talking on his cell phone**. Since Andrew wasn't with me to verify the sighting, I emailed Larry when I got home. He emailed right back and told me it was him.

This year when I was looking for gifts for Andrew's birthday, I came across Larry's production company website. I decided to buy him a Habit t-shirt. The paypal button on their site was a little wanky so I had to email Larry about it. On a whim, I asked if Larry would include a Happy Birthday note to Andrew with the shirt.

I can't believe the awesome package Larry sent. Of course there was the t-shirt and the note, but he also included a handful of promotional postcards, and Habit collectible trading cards. He is such a nice guy! The gift was a huge surprise. It was so fun to give Andrew something completely unexpected.

Larry has a new movie coming out called The Last Winter. It premiered at the Toronto Internation Film Festival in 2006. If you get a chance to see it, please do. Larry is the kind of guy who deserves your support.

* Both are movies that we've seen in the last couple of weeks but I haven't had a chance to put on the blog yet. In the case of Hamlet, he's only in there for a second and it was totally unexpected. I squealed and rewinded the DVD to make sure it was him.

** I take such joy in unexpectedly running into people I know. It's not important that they be famous ... I'd love it if I was walking down the street and ran into a friend, or you ... it's just that in New York, I most often recognize famous people. The only other famous person I've emailed after seeing them in New York is Vincent Gallo. I don't recommend doing that.

[photo taken 2-11-2007 in Atlantic City]

Today I read the wikipedia entry for Nikola Tesla.  This guy is amazing. Take a look at all the patents this guy had. It's staggering to think one guy did all that.  If you use electricity or radio or just about anything modern, you've got him to thank for it.

They think he may have had synesthesia, which is the coolest neurological condition I've ever heard of.  He certainly was a super genius and I can only imagine what great things he would have done with the proper funding and support.

He spent several years, while researching, doing manual labor (like digging ditches) to make money.  He also was thwarted several times by his nemesis, Edison.

He's the kind of person (or character in books and movies) that I really like: talented, tragic, weird.

[photo is a public domain publicity photo of a participant sitting in Nikola Tesla's laboratory in Colorado Springs circa 1900]