Objects In Picture Are Way Cooler Than They Appear

Drove to and fro Little Rock and Memphis today for some thrifting and a HOSB session. It was perfect weather for driving and listening to Inherent Vice and the Lewis Family. I’ve been trying to break my very dangerous taking pictures/video while driving habit but did anyone else see the moon tonight? Giant. Orange. Unable to be captured with a consumer grade digital camera from the early 2000s – that is it right there in the picture – the bright shining ball over the eighteen-wheeler taillights.

It’s blurry because of those pesky rumble strips that you hit when you are driving off the road.

Halloween Of Yesteryear, Hard To Top

Last year? Trapped in a Corn Maze, Seizure Baby and the ICP:

This year? I’m thinking I’ll find Elvis, eat three pounds of candy corn, and flying a broom to the moon.

Happy Halloween!

Visual Merch in Hot Springs, AR

The Pie Place

You can get lost in a pigs belly of bad bar-b-q here in the south so it pays to do your research. Before we left for Hot Springs last week we consulted our road food experts of Here Comes Trouble fame, and also the website Roadfood. Both connoisseur resources insisted that we stop at Craigs BBQ in De Valls Bluff, a quaint little town near the White River in Arkansas.

Roadfood said the rib plate was the real hit, but they don’t live in Memphis so we went with the other advice to get the cheeseburger. Yes, The cheeseburger. We were not disappointed.

Slaw-on-burger. Just order it the way it comes.

The service was great and the clientele was nothing but camo and Carharts. Not too many people dined inside but we did because we had to stay put – our desert was waiting across the street.

We were told that we had to get pies from The Pie Lady, a kind older woman who runs a pie shop out of her house, after we ate at Craigs. As you can see, the home is clearly labeled.

Inside was a trove of magical light and buttery crusts.

We ordered two apricot fried pies and ate them on the road. They tasted like homemade jam and dirty fruit. That is kind of what I call the decor of the place as well: Homemade Jam and Dirty Fruit – it is a distinct southern style. I’d go back for sure. Whole Pie style.

My Kind Of Gymnasium

The latest Vista Video taken inside the historic Fordyce Bath House in Hot Springs, AR shows the gym equipment of yesteryear:

Never Toss Your Go-To Material

I decided to get legit this month. Well, legit as far as becoming a proper Tennessee resident because I’ve pretty much decided to stay. This means getting a new license plate for my car. DONE. And a new drivers license. NOT DONE.

See, on my drive over to the DMV or DLS or XYZ of the great state of Tennessee, I started to feel a deep sadness about turning in my California ID. It isn’t due to expire for a good 4.8 years, but it is more than that that fed my resistance.

My hair and cheesy smile on that DL photo has consistently, and I mean 1 out of every 2 times I show the thing, gotten me attention. The kind of attention that makes TSA guards say I look like Linda Blair and waiters at Applebees say, “ha..nice smile.” It has become the only item in my comedy arsenal that produces such reliable results. I got the picture taken soon after I moved to Los Angeles and my hair was still growing out chemically induced curls from chemotherapy so I always looked like I had hot-rollered my hair. The photo quite possibly marks the greatest time of my life (minus the chemo, poverty, and 5am shift at Starbucks across from the Beverly Center).

So when I got to the Tennessee Licensing center and stood in the line behind twenty other people, I made up several excuses including the line being too long and the place smelling like wet diaper liner and I turned around and left, my Linda Blair ID still in my wallet.

My ID doesn’t identify me. Or maybe it does. It doesn’t matter. I don’t need to pin myself to the confines of state borders and boundaries.  After all, I am and always will be just a world resident, who just happens to hold an astounding, unparalleled piece of personal identification (that is valid for another 4.8 years).

Welcome To The Bath Clinic

Hot Springs National Park Fordyce Bathhouse.

Headed Out To The Ozarks

Check Tumblr for photo updates.

Learned, Observed, and Celebrated

… at the Indie Memphis Film Festival

All In: The Poker Movie. I learned that poker is more part of America than the national parks or baseball and I think Ken Burns could do an 18 hours series on the card game. I also learned that once again it was my the technological champion, the camera, the kino-eye, that “let us in” and turned poker into a spectator sport of skill, luck, and psychological study. Thank you Henry Orenstein – the inventor of the Hole Card Camera and owner of large, handsome sunglasses.

Sweethearts of the Prison Rodeo Tears and steers! Rodeos are cinematic, prisons are metaphorical, put the two together and you have the perfect ingredients for a movie.

Memphis Movement: Jookin’ The Urban Ballet And I thought that was breakdancing I saw the other night at the Best of The Flyer party. I’m so glad that film has the power to educate, I won’t make that mistake again. The people behind this production are genuinely rad people. I hope they get distribution. If not, I can post the video right here on this heavily trafficked site.

Ghost Bird On our way out to Little Rock to see the Bill Clinton Presidential Library and Museum, we passed a small town with a big billboard that said, “Brinkley: Home of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker.” and I thought to myself, I really should stop, that sounds rare and important. But the exit passed by and I missed my opportunity. I was thrilled when I found out Ghost Bird, a documentary that would explain it all, was screening at Indie Memphis. Some great footage in this -- particularly a short segment that show duck/geese (?) hunters preparing a field of decoys made from white trash bags and plastic ducks.

The Garden Lesson in filmmaking: An exhausting and spirited battle for public land compressed into a tightly edited (a perfect 80 minutes) documentary makes a riveting story, powerful political message, and a worthy historical document.

Getting Over The Hump

I consider myself middle-aged (for someone that lived in 1809) and I am happy that I found an instructional video that justifies my current state of retirement (more like deep R&D) as well as a nice essay written by a smart New Yorker that succinctly describes the effect that life-comparison has on our friendships.

Give Life to Little Things

You don’t have to give birth to get on the latest cultural bandwagon. Try non-committal windowsill gardening. That is what I do. Your best bet in those dollar bins near the entrance to your favorite Target store: Mini Grow Kits!

For a whole week, I thought I got a bunk batch of Black-Eyed Susans (BES) because they were really lagging behind the pot of gold, but this came up yesterday:

This makes me think I could have plant races. I could just watch these little pots for hours. Can’t wait to see BES shake off that dirt and flower up. It seems to be more productive than watching paint dry and gentler than watching water boil. Coming up next Lavender vs Forget-Me-Nots:

A Gesture Study

Mesmerizing hair handling and astounding perm spring-back from a local documentary about Elmwood Cemetery.

From my Historians Hair series.

Concussions

Oh my gosh – Playgrounds from the 70s got me thinking about Monkey Bars and if we are allowed to use that term or equipment anymore. I’m allowed to say whatever I want of course but I just need to know should I get called in to substitute teach a recess of some kind. I was witness to a rather severe concussion in the fifth grade and I have vowed to never challenge a person to a gymnastic competition on metal bars ever again. Monkeys may not be the symbols of play that they used to be.

Be warned: If you search the internet for Monkey Bars you should be prepared to get a bunch of unsettling news about the popular piece of playground equipment.

A Shell of A Different Color

Pre-show warm-up at the Levitt Shell.

Tinted Window

A Life of Magical Thinking

I tested and tried and proved the tumblr voice recorder last night at the Shell. It works. I’m thinking street interviews, deep thoughts, and sing-a-longs in addition to the already fascinating traveler pics on my tumblr.

My Sunday life advice is:

When you are about to open your fortune cookie after eating a nice chinese-american meal at Pei Wei, don’t think in your head, “This fortune, no matter what will be the word map of my destiny and will determine the course of all my actions.” It is childish, magical thinking and you could also get a very lame fortune that will haunt you ‘till the end of your days.

Fun, But Why is it Called a SLAM?

I’m a fan of The Moth podcast and I just heard that there is now a Moth storySLAM in Detroit at Cliff Bell’s every month now. Who picked the venue? It is perfect.

Why does everything involving a mic and no accompaniment have to be a SLAM? Why can’t it be Story-aoke? If it is really going to be a slam, the people who stink should get physically slammed off the stage. I’ve been to overly-supportive readings and performances and such and they aren’t good for anyone's development.

It seems the art of storytelling is on the upward trend (and has been) It is often on the agenda in team building and corporate development programs.  Even The Moth has a corporate training section. It reminds me of sitting through some very rehearsed sales meetings, where the VP stands in front of the room and tried desperately to relay their chosen personal anecdote (hey, everyone has to reinforce a learning moment) in a naturally convincing way. Ooooh so painful. If The Moth doesn’t come to Memphis, I will just start a monthly Corporate Meeting Video Outtake SLAM for all to enjoy.

Observant BF

Watching the National Parks Series:

“That guy…his beard… I mean he has to think he actually IS John Muir.”

“I guarantee if we look him up online he has a one man show.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m trying to focus.”

“If we google Lee Stetson One Man Show… it will come up. I KNOW PEOPLE THAT LOOK LIKE THEY HAVE ONE MAN SHOWS."

“Oh. Look:

Passport Proof

…of my love for the National Parks:

I don’t care what anyone thinks of Ken Burns, tonight is the night.

Getcher own passport!

Corporal Paddlement

Today, in a little educator orientation, I found out that DeSoto County Schools have a corporal punishment discipline system.  They just brushed over that fact like, “listen, it’s the south,” and moved on to the school’s cell phone policy. Try all you want, it is impossible to forget how truly, deeply strange mandated butt-paddling-for-punishment is.  My elementary school principal, whom the school was named after, had a red perforated rectangular wooden paddle in her office. The threat of getting paddled was often used to get kids to be quiet during assemblies. Most of our K-5 conversations were intense evaluations of how much it actually hurt. There were always rumors about the one boy that didn’t cry and it made the principal so mad that she hit him until his butt fell off and an ambulance (a rare sight in my one stop-light town) had to take him away.  B says nothing like that went down where he grew up in California, even in the seventies. And I say well look what a bunch of free-running-self-indulgent freaks came out of that joint.

Also, we saw Jerry Lawler campaigning on the corner of Poplar and something.. near Spin Street. B was impressed because Jerry L was standing outside, waving and reaching out to the people in the pouring rain. And I said well don’t be too impressed, it has been raining for ten days straight. This is true. He had to get out sometime before the election, if he waited for the rain to stop it would be time for him to run for prez 2012. Hey-Yo! I took a picture of the mayoral rain campaign. It is blurry and I will post it tomorrow.

And the last item of note is that we had a broken-hearted house guest for nearly 30 hours this week, he drove down from Chicago to sleep on our air mattress and then left after eating one of our mini drumsticks. We couldn’t really do much for him except say stuff like, “god doesn’t give you anything he isn’t not trying to punish you for.” and “whatever doesn’t kill you, probably will later” and “when god shuts one door, a levee breaks” and “everything happens for no reason at all.” And that, I truly believe.

I hope the thought liberates you all.

This Week on My Web

• Sports Maps
• Letters of Note
• Home Team on SI
• New addition at National Portrait Gallery 

Thinking About My Wordhord

Essentially what I do here on KayeKillA, besides explore a humanity above and beyond the reigning civilization, is really – a disciplined practice of the unadulterated unleashing of my wordhord, no matter how smalltownpublicschooled it may be.

Speakers of Old English referred to the words they knew as their “wordhord.” In OE poetry, a common expression meaning “He spoke” is “He unlocked his wordhord.” Those linguistic ancestors of ours saw vocabulary for the treasure that it is. (dailywritingtips.com)

Every so often I like to challenge myself to use words other than “awesome” when describing a trip or a movie or a book to friends and strangers. It is an easy lazy habit to fall into, this “awesome” habit (awesome’s close friend “AMAZING” has taken over most of my friends vocabularies).

But lame words = lame life.

It is time to spice things up people. For the rest of the year join me – and use some other phrases than, “amazing” and “can’t get my head around it.” Kick them out of your wordhord.

Ice Buckets Are Better Than Freezers

Don’t let this happen to you. Unless you can be sure that you are as good as I am at sculpting beer waterfalls over green glass.

Closer, Better, More in the Frame

The Fisheye.

In other tips for tough times...

…don’t read Knut Hamsun’s Hunger or  Steinbeck's The Grapes Of Wrath if you are in the middle of looking for work or trying to make your way in the world.  It will reveal the deep dark parts of self-doubt and fears that you hadn’t even worried about yet. But it won’t be cool. It isn’t like listening to sad songs when you just got dumped because there is something deeply meaningful and wistful and nostalgic and noble about heartbreak. Completely unlike starving to death because you accidently got a degree in fine art and you got a rash the last time you wore bizz casual slacks.

When Positive Thinking Doesn’t Work

You are only a fool as much as you believe the affirmations you tell yourself. The reason you still don’t feel so great is that you haven’t found enough examples of people having it worse off than you. Or maybe you have been going overboard with that – you aren’t going to feel better if you think about bombing victims and orphanages, get with it – are you trying to get a bleeding ulcer or something?

You need to call your friend in Michigan and make fun of the people they overheard at the mall:

“I seen some dinner plates here last week, they were pink with the blue flowers – the peeenies, do you still have them?”

“I don’t recall… do you know if they were in our Indian Summer Sass collection?”

“Well, I seen them right there on the shelf back there. That’s where I seen them last week.”

Hahaha. How hilarious. Seen. Don’t you feel better? You would never say anything like that. You may be losing your mind. But not your grammatical sensibility.

I call this: schlechtegrammatikfreude

Engine 382

Casey Jones Village.

From My Hand Towel Collection

LA Lady Stories

I read this article while waiting in my acupuncturist’s (it was LA – everyone had one) office two years ago and the story of Douglas Anne Munson is still with me most of the time. I suspect that my emotional state after reading about her demise was permanently pinned into the sides of my knees and the skin between my thumb and index finger (placement of the needles that day, recommended for migraines and people with flex spending accounts) and since I use my thumb and index finger a lot I get shocks of anxiety and a feeling of destitution along with an intense urge to write mysteries. 

I was thinking about ol’ Mercedes while hunting for some unrelated Los Angeles information when I came across this blog entry from Theresa Duncan’s blog – it caught my eye because she used an Elmore Leonard quote, “Los Angeles Is Detroit With Palm Trees” – I remembered reading about her that same summer two years ago when I was getting stuck with skinny pins – about how she and her boyfriend committed suicide within two weeks of each other and thought that scientologists were after them (internet analysis gathered from unreliable blogs and sloppy new sources). But it wasn’t the tragic end of her career and life that I remembered the most, it is that through all of the stuff written about her after her death, she was accused of lying about her age, and education, they had to question whether or not she worked at Marwil Bookstore in Detroit. That I remember because I used to get my textbooks there.

I’d search the internet for inspiring stories about happy talented women in Los Angeles but they are hard to find, when I do stumble across something I will be sure to get to an acupuncturist immediately after reading to seal in the warm fuzzies and replace the dark pits of despair.

In case you need: more quotes about Los Angeles.

Or a: pick me up.

We Could Have Been Rubber Tappers

Being in the midst of a job search is discouraging, self-involved and desperate - much like a blog. I boycotted Labor Day and pretended to work all day Monday. I did what I used to do at my most of my previous legitimate jobs -- searched craigslist for free bikes and funny missed connection ads. Like a regular work day, nothing I did felt satisfying. It has been getting to me, my condition of unemployment (and all those mis-connected people). I don't worry about stuff very often but every ninth night or so I stay awake and imagine just where this downward spiral of my meandering career ambitions is taking me (please note the galactic-talent-guided arrow of my artistic life is still guided straight to unfounded heights of eternal cultural impact - nothing has changed in that arena, I just need expensive haircuts).

I noticed that these nightanxiety thoughts inevitably lead to worrying about car insurance, which my little sister tells me is also where her worries eventually end up. Even troubles seemingly unrelated, "Is he cheating on me? Will I be able to afford car insurance?" or "Is the cancer coming back? Will GEICO find out?" or "I only have PLPD! What will I put on job applications when they ask, Do you have car insurance?" And so it goes, maybe it has something to do with our father being a drivers training instructor and an extremely sensible man.

Further, I believe that it makes sense that my concern for the car, the last bastion of hope, mobility, and independence is the root of all my worries. An uninsured car, is an unsure life.

It is a racket though, all of it. Car insurance, job applications, drivers training... Henry Ford would have 1) Laughed at my troubles and 2) Never hired me because I'm not good at housekeeping and obviously a communist subversive. I know this after finishing Fordlandia, on Labor Day evening of all days. Reading about the enslavement of factory workers and rubber tappers in the Amazon should have put my at-least-I-have-a-roof-over-my-head situation in perspective but instead succeeded in depressing me to no end about the effects of industrial globalization on world economy, labor, and my fruitless search for employment and enslavement to western culture and social approval. 

I have a three options:  

• Join THIS GUY’s club
• Go BACK TO SCHOOL at AVARI
• Go the Henry Ford route and develop a full-fledged mania for collecting antiques and hope to bring back simpler times and self-sufficiency with a butter churn.

Gifts.

It’s not my birthday but look what I got this past week:

The above item is indeed a portable book light! The Mighty Bright. I’m moving into advanced adulthood with minimal glare and a scorpion in my mouth. Thanks BB.

Spirit Photo Set

The National Media Museum has some of the best Flickr Photo Sets. I revisited The spirit photographs of William Hope today for inspiration:

Roads Taken

A general outline of places I’ve driven, not including Mexico & France.

Road Trip Research Expert

Three on Thursday - top of my list for road trip research:

For all the oddball stuff you can handle, check out: ROADSIDE AMERICA. Their Map-A-City feature is the greatest thing to happen to the internet.

I’ve found some interesting restaurant suggestions on Roadfood.com – if you upgrade to a special membership you can create MAPS of eateries along your road trip route.

And of course, The National Scenic Byways site is a must.

del.icio.us Tags: road trip,travel,maps,oddball attractions

When Pepsi Came With Maps

I found this in “my archives” during the Michigan visit:

The Yes M!ch!gan Map!

Oh, I remember when soft drinks used to come with maps. I remember a couple weeks ago, sundown in the deep south, when my Verizon Wireless Navigator was bugging out on us and we had to use last years atlas to get us back on the highway.

In case you haven’t caught some of my previous posts - I love maps. I love maps of malls, museums, battlegrounds, college campuses, and airports. I have a habit of saving them and it makes for a cluttered life. I would scan and put them in digital storage but you know how small scanner beds are and how big maps can be.

This has been a lifelong interest and I find that like wine, maps get better with age. Think old globes, think USSR, think colonialism.

I like the idea that something we see as a factual reference document can turn to a piece of radical disinformation in a matter of years.

Just look at THIS MAP JACKPOT OF A SITE  and see how people used to think California was an island. I think we may rediscover that they were right in 2012.

What I really like is to combine my map obsession with my commitment to snail mail so I am always on the lookout for postcard maps. I found this postcard at a BP in Indiana recently:

Apparently it is from The Hoosier Heritage Quilt. I found that out at Indiana University’s Historic Maps of Indiana Site.  Cool, huh?

I guess you have to be a map nerd.