Zach "Morning Jacket" Kuhn
At dawn we ride.
So one fourth of my school work for the week is now completely done. Next stop: a prose paper on Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces. Specifically....I have no idea yet. Leave me alone, it's my dad's birthday. I guarantee he's working today, prolly listening to the crappy new REM song on XRT and dangling a cigarette that's barely hanging to his lips while hammering in a piece of soffit thirty five feet in the air. You could say he's a tight rope walkin' man.
So here's the second installment of "my life running into David Foster Wallace, the genius author of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Infinite Jest". Ryan and I go to see You can count on me at the Normal Theatre in prehistoric downtown normal. This is my third trip this year to both the film and to the theatre (I saw State and Main and Gimme Shelter earlier this year, and drove to Champaign and the Cantera 30 to see YCCOM). So Ryan picks me up and we're driving down North towards the Deadpan and she sees her friend from her internship. And who is she with? You guessed it. So Ryan yells out to her and she looks but doesn't quite understand what's going on and says "Who is that?"
We park the car and catch up to them in line, but we're about ten feet behind them. Mr. Wallace is in rare form again, this time wearing an IOWA t-shirt with a sweatshirt tied around his waist, shorts, socks pulled up and tennis shoes. The awesome part? He's wearing a woman's headband to pull back his hair.***1** So we head inside and pick out a seat and I sit down and I turn around and Ryan's halfway over there to talk to them. I sit there and then buy some skittles.***2*** And I sit there, and occasionally they look over at me and giggle. I feel like a jackass, I look like a jackass, I smell OK from showering.
So***3*** Ryan comes back and thinks I'm mad at her for going over there without me (I'm not) and then tells me something that can either be seen as positive or negative: They remember you from the reading. Understand, gentle readers, that DFW and I have met before. If you go to the archives you'll find it under March 23rd. I asked him a question about Infinite Jest and the movie industry.
So***3*** I guess the girl with him asked Ryan if, and I quote, "that was the guy who asked the cinema question at the reading?". Yes, it is. "Oh," she says. Whether or not this is a good OH! what a genius or a bad oh?!?!?! what a moron remains to be seen. But anyway, encounter #2 hits the books.
The next five books I would read in a perfect world would be: "The Politics of Meaning" by Michael Lerner; "A Prayer for Owen Meaney (for Ryan)" by John Irving; "Requiem for a Dream" by Herbert Selby Jr.; "Farrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury; and "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky.
In the stereo: At Dawn by My Morning Jacket. 50 plus minutes of pure bliss.
***1***Which he asked his date to put in her purse for him...
***2***No Green Apple, No Green Apple.
***3***There is no need to remind me I use the word "so" too often in this BLARG. I realize and agree with you in advance.
At dawn we ride.
So one fourth of my school work for the week is now completely done. Next stop: a prose paper on Greil Marcus's Lipstick Traces. Specifically....I have no idea yet. Leave me alone, it's my dad's birthday. I guarantee he's working today, prolly listening to the crappy new REM song on XRT and dangling a cigarette that's barely hanging to his lips while hammering in a piece of soffit thirty five feet in the air. You could say he's a tight rope walkin' man.
So here's the second installment of "my life running into David Foster Wallace, the genius author of A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Infinite Jest". Ryan and I go to see You can count on me at the Normal Theatre in prehistoric downtown normal. This is my third trip this year to both the film and to the theatre (I saw State and Main and Gimme Shelter earlier this year, and drove to Champaign and the Cantera 30 to see YCCOM). So Ryan picks me up and we're driving down North towards the Deadpan and she sees her friend from her internship. And who is she with? You guessed it. So Ryan yells out to her and she looks but doesn't quite understand what's going on and says "Who is that?"
We park the car and catch up to them in line, but we're about ten feet behind them. Mr. Wallace is in rare form again, this time wearing an IOWA t-shirt with a sweatshirt tied around his waist, shorts, socks pulled up and tennis shoes. The awesome part? He's wearing a woman's headband to pull back his hair.***1** So we head inside and pick out a seat and I sit down and I turn around and Ryan's halfway over there to talk to them. I sit there and then buy some skittles.***2*** And I sit there, and occasionally they look over at me and giggle. I feel like a jackass, I look like a jackass, I smell OK from showering.
So***3*** Ryan comes back and thinks I'm mad at her for going over there without me (I'm not) and then tells me something that can either be seen as positive or negative: They remember you from the reading. Understand, gentle readers, that DFW and I have met before. If you go to the archives you'll find it under March 23rd. I asked him a question about Infinite Jest and the movie industry.
So***3*** I guess the girl with him asked Ryan if, and I quote, "that was the guy who asked the cinema question at the reading?". Yes, it is. "Oh," she says. Whether or not this is a good OH! what a genius or a bad oh?!?!?! what a moron remains to be seen. But anyway, encounter #2 hits the books.
The next five books I would read in a perfect world would be: "The Politics of Meaning" by Michael Lerner; "A Prayer for Owen Meaney (for Ryan)" by John Irving; "Requiem for a Dream" by Herbert Selby Jr.; "Farrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury; and "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky.
In the stereo: At Dawn by My Morning Jacket. 50 plus minutes of pure bliss.
***1***Which he asked his date to put in her purse for him...
***2***No Green Apple, No Green Apple.
***3***There is no need to remind me I use the word "so" too often in this BLARG. I realize and agree with you in advance.
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