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From a video we shot awhile back but just posted recently:

I don’t do enough glasses porn so we shot that in part to try to remedy that. It’s a shame I don’t shoot more stuff while I’m wearing my spectacles since I have a really “sexy” strong prescription, if you’re into that sort of thing:

right eye = -6.75 -1.00 x 135
left eye = -4.00 -2.75 x 156

The third number is for my astigmatism.

I also did a creepy voice-over/roleplay with myself for that video AND Delia threw her back out shooting that POV (point of view), so I want to make sure it’s fully “appreciated” by nerd-lovers. Members can see it here. Non-members can join our sites to see it OR buy it on our clips4sale store (look for “Interview with a Nerd”).

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Speaking of nerds, we finally saw Star Trek last night. Aside from it being an amazing, must-see-on-the-big-screen event, it totally had a Father’s day theme AND there were only five other people in the theatre with us, and three of those people were mega-Trekkers. The dude looked exactly like “Sex”, the crazy guy whose mom brings him to try out for So You Think You Can Dance every season. Only this guy made really awesome geeked-out joy noises in response to the movie and made the experience even more pleasurable and authentic than it would have otherwise been. I mean, we totally geeked out but this nerd-monkey NOISE that he made just epitomized what Star Trek fans are all about. And even with that few people in the seats, I *still* managed to get some fucker putting his feet up on our row of seats and shaking the shit out of me so, as usual, I had to have words with someone. PEOPLE. I love and loathe the shit out of them.

I think the last movie was saw in the theatre before this was Twilight so we’re parched for big screen entertainment. I’d love to see Up and Terminator Salvation before it’s too late.

My birthday last week was filled with ding dongs and dildos and a deep sigh of gratitude that a few people treated me to a trip to the salon tomorrow to go back to being a blonde.

I sort of stretched out my own personal celebration, doing shows on my birthday proper, then attempting to watch an engrossing movie, selecting Changeling which was sort of a big fat mistake. YES, it was engrossing. In a horrible, harrowing, gut-wrenching way. And even though I knew I was being totally emotionally manipulated by the film industry, I couldn’t just TURN IT OFF the way I did with Titanic (you heard me — I shut that melodramatic motherfucker off and refused to watch it past halfway).

Changeling pretty much ruined our plan to go see The Reader the last night it was playing in town. Instead we opted for something a little more uplifting to balance out the trauma of Changeling: we moved the Playstation (a birthday present from years back) into the bedroom and played a snowboarding video game (SSX3) for hours. And ate ding dongs. Well, *I* ate ding dongs. Delia didn’t.

And then I threw the rest of the ding dongs away. Because a) my birthday was OVER, and b) I have a goal to lose 15 pounds by June 1st (or less if I’m satisfied/feel good before I get there; since I’ve already lost four since I made the goal, I only have 11 to go). I definitely don’t want to lose TOO much of this action:

I continued celebrating a couple days ago when I noticed our friend had a two-for-one print sale going on and since I hadn’t bought any of her art yet, I treated myself! It was affordable and made me happy.

But what I *really* wanted to do for my birthday was spend some more time reading Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy which is SO FUCKING AWESOME I set it aside because I seriously couldn’t stand for it to end knowing there would be a big gaping emptiness without having more of it to look forward to. So today? I went to the used bookstore and picked up the only two Auster paperbacks they had on the shelf (Oracle Night and The Brooklyn Follies). Now I can finish The NY Trilogy and still feel like there’s a reason to live.

I also looked for the second and third books in the Abhorsen series, but they only had Sabriel (which I finished months ago and want to hurry up and continue before I forget everything). I grabbed a couple other titles (ex. Codex) plus some appealing books in the “free box” (ex. The Tommyknockers) and guiltily made my way home with a satisfying stack of stories to chew on. Sometimes I leave the books I buy in the car or somewhere Delia won’t see them right away because I feel so bad about spending the money on them when I don’t even read most of them right away (if ever) and I refuse to GET RID of any of them unless they really suck total ass, so they’ll all be living with us forever.

The thing is, I need to have CHOICES. Because there are some moments on the toilet where I’m after a very specific kind of book to lull myself into a comfortable shit. Or the weather demands a certain genre. Or I’m emotionally craving a story that delivers total escapism. And fuck . . . when it only costs $25 to buy a big armful of pleasure, how wrong can it be? Plehhhhhhhszhoooooooor . . . is in the booooooooooks.

Maybe tomorrow after I endure the torture of getting my hair colored, I’ll continue celebrating my birthday with some Paul Auster and a sweet mug of Russian Caravan tea.

As a feminist and a sex positive person I probably should DESPISE Twilight, but I don’t. I read the book (and only the first one so far) because it takes place near here and I saw the movie because the previews made it look way better than the book . . . I felt compelled by curiosity, local interest, a desire to know more about a pop culture phenom, and because I TOTALLY WANTED TO.

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The book? Meh. It was entertaining, mildly annoying from a local’s perspective, and mind-boggling since I wouldn’t have STOOD for so many pages of overt chastity when I was a tween reader myself in the eighties. A sign of the conservative times, I guess; I am DAMN glad I grew up with Judy Blume’s Ralph-named penises and totally taboo rape scenes in Flowers in the Attic.

The movie? LOVED IT. I mean, I seriously fucking LOVED it. The previews drew me in because it looked dark and funny (there wasn’t a trace of self-aware humor in the book, so that was an improvement already) and I wanted to see the flying scenes. It was just an all-around great movie-theater movie — pretty, entertaining, moody . . . familiar.

Here’s the deal about Twilight: no matter how loathsome it may be from a political point of view, that movie (and the book for other people) delivers exactly what a lot of young women crave and feel romantically. It’s extremely exciting and beautiful and “sexy” in a vague, inexplicit, totally hysterically emotional way. Beautiful boy looks at beautiful girl and they are CONNECTED, locked together . . . anticipating . . . SOMETHING totally INTENSE!!!!

You can criticize that all you want, but when you do, you’re trashing the (natural) fantasies of lots and lots of young woman. When I watched that movie I really didn’t care what the implications were, I cared that it DELIVERED visions of something deeply desired by girls. After you finally kiss? Something very exciting happens, kind of like exploding into a flying spell into the sky!! Yeah, it’s fucking stupid, but that overwrought anticipation of something that gobbles you up entirely and transcends the mundane is part of most young women’s hormonal pre-teen/teenage experience. What’s next isn’t sex, it’s MAGIC!!

I had orgasms and the anticipation of sex on the brain a lot as a young woman and I *probably* wouldn’t have liked that movie as much then as I do now (my generation’s Twilight was Legend, which I thought was a enchanting for two minutes then a total fucking bore except for when Tim Curry as the devilish dark beasty was going to do whatever dirty things he was going to do to Mia Sara), but I still had to celebrate it for being pure fore-fore-foreplay and girly fantasy with pretty menacing shadows.

In general I’m becoming less and less tolerant of myself and other people making fun of what women want or theorizing that the politically incorrect, unempowering things women want are *entirely* constructed for us artificially. There is nothing fake about girls wanting to fly around on the back of a strong beautiful sparkly vampire boy’s back or to be a vampire and run-really-really-fast/fly themselves (I haven’t read the rest of the books so I don’t know if she eventually gets there or not, but clearly there are OTHER female characters who do).

I don’t know why it should make people cringe that girls want to immerse themselves in the fantasy of being in tragic love with such a creature or that the public version of this particular popular story is g-rated (except for the violence, of course — this IS America, after all). Personally? I watch a lot of porn but there were scenes in this movie that were five billion times more agonizingly erotic than anything XXX rated ever could hope to be. It was a brilliant fucking tease, and there’s nothing hotter than having no release. I don’t give a fuck about the stammering heroine and her shortcomings; she’s a blank slate and nobody else cares much about her either because it’s a fucking FANTASY. Do girls really need a fucking role model in every single fantasy they have or are they entitled to be thrilled and entertained and suspend contact with reality just like everyone else? I also *almost* don’t care about the scariness of fantasizing about a creepy stalker boyfriend who sneaks into your room at night and stares at you while you sleep; yes, it’s totally gross and weird and dangerous. But a lot of us have had that same exact unrealistic fantasy and it made us feel good (in more ways than one). That? It’s human nature. And I’m sick of women being shamed and cautioned into censoring their own fantasies because we’re apparently too stupid to distinguish between fantasy and reality. IT’S A STORY ABOUT VAMPIRES. Can we tell reality and consequences to fuck off for a little while?

If anyone wants to post relevant links like feminist critiques of Twilight, etc. feel free. I honestly have clicked off of just about all of them without giving them the time they probably deserve simply because I’m not in the mood for dissecting it, but I totally understand if other people are (and that my “arguments” are ill-informed and based totally on suspicions and raw emotion). One of the good ones I clicked off of made interesting observations regarding the popularity of abstinence-only sex “education” and Twilight. I don’t know why I’m just not in the mood to care a whole lot this time around (I was certainly pissed enough about The Girl with a Pearl Earring that I almost walked out of the theatre) unless it’s as I said above; that girls deserve to have their desires spoken to and to enjoy their daydreamy fantasies regardless of how unrealistic and bizarre and dangerous they might be. So yeah — *I’m* not very interested in getting into a discussion about it in comments, but I totally understand why others might be so more info and other people’s perspectives and discussions are still welcome.

In first grade I was addicted to this story:

Every chance I got to go to the library and request that they set my friend and I up to listen to this, I WOULD. I remember it as an audio tape with a little paperback book hung in one of those baggies with plastic handles they had for mixed media, but now that my memory is jogged by this youtube video I wonder if it wasn’t a filmstrip because everything about this seems so familiar, but it’s probably just the narration and images, not the motion:

Anyway, I loved it. Couldn’t get enough of it and listened to it OVER and OVER again. I’ve always loved stories that take place at night, were dark, involved sleeping, criminals, loners, outsiders . . . dark escapism that’s sweetly menacing. It’s weird to look back on it now and see more adult elements in it and to read this New York Times review of the book and the author and the challenge of creating both art for children and erotica for adults. I’m glad I was exposed to The Three Robbers in the seventies in public school because I’ll bet that book would never see the light of day without a public lynching of the guy if it were to come out today. Nowadays you must either be 100% child-and-work-safe or resign yourself to being considered a 100% evil boundary-rapist. Take your pick. The only way people can fly under the radar is to be unsuccessful or too artistic for the general population to acknowledge you, and I’m sure this reissue of his out-of-print books is one of those things that will only be noticed by existing fans like myself.

I wish I had a magical blunderbuss to blow that bullshit right out of people’s assheads. But for now I’m going to add The Three Robbers to my wishlist so I can read it to my nephew(s — another’s on the way). WITH SOUND EFFECTS!

Our friend AmberLily is a big Dexter fan, so her blog and tweets reminded us to check it out. I figured I would love it and looked forward to getting it through Netflix and starting from the beginning.

We only made it through one and a half episodes before we sent it back. In some ways it was just my style; I *DELIGHT* in movies like Gacy, Ed Gein, May and American Psycho. Dexter is stylish, a little campy, witty, etc. I appreciated many aspects of what I saw, but I totally didn’t want to spend any more time watching it. Part of the problem was that I loathed the female characters. Another problem is that we watch our netflixed tv shows at night before bed, and Dexter is just too dark and ludicrously violent to be relaxing then.

I’m also hypercritical of stories of vigilantism when the vigilante is a MAN, meting out “justice” for crimes perpetrated against women and/or children. REALLY annoys me (except in the movie Buster and Billie which I *love*).

And it was just too far-fetched. I know, it’s in a way that’s probably cool to other people but for me was just annoying. I’m pretty hard to please in the crime drama department, preferring/loving the stuff that’s openly based on real crimes or is documentary style (almost all the crap on “Tru” tv). Also, since we’ve been part of shooting a few low-budget movies I have a harder time suspending disbelief when we watch other people’s acting; I feel awkward for the actors and wonder how much time went into crafting certain scenes – the veil has been lifted even with the small-scale stuff we done and everything seems so transparent. I felt that way (embarrassed) a lot watching Michael C. Hall in his “action” scenes where he’s confronting his victims.

We prefer to watch Star Trek: Deep Space Nine before bed. I know it doesn’t make sense when I criticized Dexter for being too far-fetched, but whatever. It makes me feel good to totally escape into a positive, optimistic vision of the future. I like going to sleep with messages of hope. Watching shows like Next Gen, Deep Space Nine, and Northern Exposure is like going to an ideal version of church for me where nobody expects you to believe in God and everyone at least TRIES to treat everybody else with kindness. People express enthusiasm, wonder and awe at the mystery of it all and the boundlessness of possibilities is depicted as something people can experience while they’re still alive.

So Deep Space Nine (with help from Weeds, Entourage, Spaced and Big Love) beat Dexter off our queue.

Note to AmberLily: I just want you to know that I started writing this BEFORE you tweeted that you hate Seattle. And I don’t hate Dexter as much as you hate Seattle — I was so close to loving it! Some of the images were so beautiful . . .

Yesterday I walked across a field with my eyes closed. After the heavy grounded feeling of walking in wet sand for almost an hour, walking blind on hard-packed dirt with sunburned grass felt like flying with the wind in my face, blowing my hair around. Or floating, at least. The only other people in the field were three black-robed figures sparring with each other using long sticks. With my eyes closed they sounded like three people playing football. The field was so big it was easy for me to avoid walking into them even without the benefit of sight.

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We’ve been having some private stress around here (on top of the published stress of trying over and over again to get pregnant) so yesterday Delia canceled her show and we *finally* went to see The Dark Knight. I wasn’t nearly as excited going into it as I was Batman Begins and didn’t feel the same attachment to this one, maybe because I preferred the more solitary focus on Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins and the whole emphasis on creating and finding an alter ego for himself. The imagery in Batman Begins was also darker and more appealing to me in a sort of Robert Louis Stevenson way than Dark Knight, which everyone keeps describing as “darker” than BB but really was just more hideous, brutal and scary. Yeah, the humour was darker and everything felt more tragic because of Heath Ledger’s potent brilliance, but that diverted so much attention from Christian Bale that it wasn’t really about Batman or anybody except for Heath Ledger’s Joker. Oh yeah, I do love the whole commentary on human nature being a dual thing of dark and light, I’m just saying that it didn’t speak to me on a deeply personal level the way Batman Begins did.

As I get older, it’s harder and harder for me to watch movies without being bored and annoyed by what seems like derivations from other movies I think are “better” or strike me as more original just because *I* happened to see them when I was younger and was first introduced to certain themes. There were a lot of familiar elements in The Dark Knight, but it really was awesome enough that it didn’t annoy me, especially since I recognize that there are *no* original ideas (plus, having no familiarity with comics or specialized movie knowledge I KNOW I’m completely ignorant of where some of these things “originated”). I felt like I recognized stuff from In the Line of Fire and freaky cross-dressing a la Silence of the Lambs. Since I know nothing of the comics and never even saw Jack Nicholson’s Joker, I couldn’t help totally associating the smile/scar with the Black Dahlia, especially since I just picked up another book (with the ghastly pictures) about the case.

Anyway, I loved the magic trick with the pencil and lines like “whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you… stranger.” Favorites aside from Heath’s performance? Maggie Gyllenhaal’s Rachel Dawes was SO much better than Katie’s — LOVED her, and the chase scene/shootout with the semis. We also loved the political commentary on whether or not the threat of terrorism justifies spying on people, etc. Still, I don’t feel compelled to see this one more than that once in the theater (unless we could see it in IMAX). I really wasn’t prepared for the violence, and of course it always annoys me when there’s no swearing in a movie but there’s plenty of freaky brutality (I could not hack the part at the end when the dogs and Batman were being beaten with the pipe) and it gets less than an R rating; just having the knowledge in my head that our government is prosecuting people for “obscenity” even for just writing taboo stories and that they refuse to let COPA die makes me resentful when I see how violence in movies is embraced in America as totally acceptable for young people to watch. I can’t watch this stuff without thinking, “so THIS is okay for thirteen year olds to see but the sight of my clitoris will scar them for life?” Whatever. It’s not that I want kids to see porn or that I don’t appreciate a movie without swearing or that I think violent movies should be boycotted, it’s the nonsensical double standards that drive me up a wall.

So does Christian Bale’s alleged assault of his mom and sister ruin my appreciation of his acting? Ummm, no. Just like a president cheating on his wife has absolutely zero to do with whether or not he’s a good president, whether or not Marky Mark is a homophobe or a racist has nothing to do with my enjoyment when I watch Boogie Nights or Entourage and I still think PYT is a fucking awesome song whether or not Michael Jackson is a pedo. Given the rant I just made, it probably surprises you to hear that I don’t relate to people who can’t enjoy a celebrity’s work because of their crimes and supposed personal flaws (which may or may not be true, but we will never know). It’s not that I don’t enjoy juicy gossip about famous people, but it’s just another form of entertainment to me that is separate from whether or not I enjoy their actual work. Like, is it really a surprise to Christian Bale’s fans that he’s a freak? The guy wanted to starve himself to 100 pounds only eating an apple and can of tuna a day for The Machinist; were you really not aware that he’s fucking mental? Apparently, because I’ve been reading whining from women who think they can’t adore him anymore. YOU ARE WATCHING HIS MOVIES, NOT DATING HIM!

So yeah . . . sometimes I can separate things. Other times? Not so much.

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In addition to taking the night off for a movie, I also made emergency reservations for a three night stay at the beach next week, so our Sunday, August 10th and Monday, August 11th shows will be canceled. We will do some shooting while we’re there, but mostly we just need to get away. Yes, we have a beach here, but Puget Sound and the Strait aren’t the same as the actual ocean. I didn’t know it until Delia told me, but the timing is perfect because we’ll be out there for the meteor shower. She also just happened to order some things from REI before we made these plans so it all fell into place perfectly since the days I happened to find open rooms and camping spots weren’t my first pick before I knew these things, but just happened to be after the REI stuff will arrive and during the meteor shower.

When I told Delia I wanted to take some pictures at night while the frothy white things were still in bloom, she explained to me that “those “blooming frothy things” are called oceanspray (Holodiscus discolor)“. I adore it when she gives me the Latin names for plants. She went on to tell me, “they’re a native shrub noted for their exceptionally hard wood. The local tribes used them for spearing fish and such.”

It was windy when we took the pictures so the blossoms are white blurs in many of the photos, but here is a small taste of what we were aiming for:

I love the way my white panties are gleaming!

FYI: the light source is an overhead street light. We have a lot to learn and practice with night photography but I really enjoy making the attempts. We would go back and try again, but the flowers are all getting dry and brown; we really shot this set of pics on nearly the last possible night to get the white froth. There’s always next year, though.

If you want a peek at something that encapsulates a lot of what’s magical to me about black and white, nighttime, small towns, intimacy, and taboo, here’s one of my favorite things from one of the most beautiful movies ever, To Kill a Mockingbird:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB0sjVN2Pic&hl=en&fs=1&color1=0x2b405b&color2=0x6b8ab6&border=1]

As if the opening credits weren’t enough gorgeousness, so much of the movie takes place at night. It’s spooky and vulnerable and wondrous. That feeling of trees with treasures holes and dark houses with Boo Radleys and curious little people wandering around at night when they shouldn’t, finding out sad, scary grown-up things . . . that is a feeling I love and something I would someday like for us to be good at capturing (but without the children, of course). It’s why my Keds and panties and my limbs lit up are so captivating to me in these pictures. Why I love the debris on the path. I love the nighttime. I love woodsy places in drowsy neighborhoods. I love being outside and awake when everyone else is asleep. Or *trying* to fall asleep. Or getting fucked really loudly, which is what we heard one lady doing while we were shooting — it was HOT BEYOND BELIEF!

I’ll be posting the full set of pictures for members today. If you’d like to see them (and support us in our erotic endeavors as we learn more about low light and night photography) but you’re not a member yet, you can JOIN HERE.

As usual I have lots of thoughts and news swirling around in my head, waiting to be blogged about but without adequate focused time to do it. Thanks for staying interested and continuing to check in with me during my dry spells.

I’m in a funk right now, mostly owing to PMS. The weather has been a bit gloomy; even when it’s sunny out there’s a shadow of oppressive darkness hanging around. See how it’s crushing our dog? Tiny purple weed flowers growing close to the ground. You don’t even feel like stretching.

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Here’s the latest on not being pregnant and what we’re doing about it.

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How about some movie-talk? We saw Iron Man. We went into it prepared for the bad aspects; it was a ridiculous blockbuster MOVIE-movie, and we needed that for the mindless entertainment factor. I loved the metal King Kong and the flying-against-the-fighter-jets scenes. It was nowhere near a V for Vendetta type of flick, but it’s still special to see a big movie in the theater with a lefty storyline. One annoying detail sticks out in my mind above all others: armpits. Was it my imagination, or were his armpits shaved after supposed months in captivity? If so, gross. That’s the epitome of a fucked-up dose of contemporary unreality.

I definitely think we should all thank our lucky stars Robert Downey Jr. got the title role instead of Cage or Cruise. He’s been wank material for me since I was a teen watching Less Than Zero when James Spader made him get on his knees and suck some cock to pay for drugs. I so wish that scene was hardcore or even just a minute longer (since it wasn’t I relied heavily upon the straight scenes for “inspiration”). I loved Secretary and all, but I’d really rather have seen a long redux of that interrupted BJ scene. Maybe this time it could have been Jake instead of Maggie joining RDJ to perform sweaty, tear-stained head on some large coked-up stallion. Robert, you STILL have the most lickable, greasy eyelids in film. And I will never forget the way you told us you were getting “chubby” in Shortcuts.

If you want a sense of what my days have been like lately, check here.

My favorite Christmas present was having Juno come to our town’s theatre and getting to watch it with Kris, and seeing Diablo Cody win an Oscar last night for writing Juno was like an early birthday present.

Here’s a video of Kris and I at the movies GUSHING over Diablo:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9hpT-R0pA4]

For me, Diablo represents the very best of what the blogosphere and web voyeurism/exhibitionism offer: the opportunity to watch another human’s story unfold and experience success along the way. To develop high hopes for someone and cheer for them when things go well. To recognize someone’s talent, observe that recognition snowballing, and see her REWARDED for it. It’s very fulfilling, and not in a vicarious I-can-now-imagine-it-happening-to-me way, but just in the basic sense of caring about someone and being extremely happy for her.

Of course, she *is* also a symbol to me, too (on top of just being an awesome human); seeing a woman on that stage who has stripped and worked the peeps doing hardcore masturbation shows for money now getting respect for her non-sex work while everyone knows about her stint in sex work is Pretty Fucking Cool.

Anyway, we have (one of) her shining moment(s) recorded on our DVR now and have watched it about 35 times in the past 23 hours; I have cried every single time. And can I just say that she looked fucking fabulous, too?