Tori and Lokita has an integrity of vision. Its pacing is unlike any blockbuster, so we are allowed to follow characters down the street at a human pace, and listen to them perform, by demand, the entirety of a special song they have memorized to the customers where they run drugs. The consequences to them of events beyond their control, due to choices made by other people, are realistic and heartbreaking.
Visitors to the exhibit grab drinks at the bar. Photo by John Griswold The traveling Banksy exhibit looked good in the online ad, and there was a warning of “high sell-out risk.” I bought quickly, for two of us, mine a VIP ticket for extra access, so I…
The best part of the documentary Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain and the select best of Bourdain’s many shows embodies the complexity of trying to hold all the beauty and pain as he moved down the road.
Photo by John Griswold https://commonreader.washu.edu/app/uploads/2023/03/Recipe-Stories-Happiness-Tacos.mp3 It can be hard to match the quality of tacos with that of your happiness sometimes. I thought the tacos and margaritas festival would do it: Not just food and drink, but a taco-eating contest, hot pepper-eating contest, live music,…
Here I am then, standing at a podium while an organizer makes an introduction so overly generous that out-of-town attendees wonder what is happening.
In the hogan I was miserable, not enlightened, felt funky and slimed. All the individual animal and species sins poured out of me, not as catharsis or healing, but as reminder and irritant, and I did not believe in sin. This was not my culture, my ceremony, my victory, my tribe. It was like being put to death slowly and humiliatingly for my presumption.
Very few people I knew growing up had braces, but most of us just gnawed the trees as we were designed by nature to do.
They pressed the plunger and put the pink death fluid in the clearly defined black vein of Rascal’s back right leg. He died with his head in my palm. He was my kitty boy.
“Shakespeare in Love” worked well enough for my mood this week. The film is twenty-five years old now and holds up. More importantly, the writing by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard (for which they won an Oscar) is crisp, flawlessly-paced, and does not take itself too seriously, even in its tendency to be self-referential.
A “Year of Vonnegut” was declared in Indy in 2007, but that was deflated by his death that year. Given the centenary, it seemed as if there should be more going on, and that got me thinking about legacy from the start.
Larry, a former IT manager, said he wanted to make the AI “come out from behind its parameters,” into the weird new state some users are reporting that seems oddly sentient.
I have waited for time to pass, the purest waiting there is—meaningless except for itself. I am still waiting for the meaning to be made clear.