Lynchian moments

In the NYT's Education Life, a sampling of future celebrities who were once college roommates. The most interesting/entertaining one: J. Geils Band frontman Peter Wolf...and David Lynch!

Wolf: "One 'Lynchian' moment I remember was when David realized there was a cockroach on his toothbrush while he was brushing his teeth."

(This post deserves a better headline. Ideas?)

What about me and my roommate?

The Cinema-Talk of Parkus Grammaticus

I. Inland Empire by way of Oulipo (composed entirely of photos found on eBay):



(Via Exoskeleton.)

II. Dzyd Dennis talks to Harmony Korine in the NYT:

In Panama, he befriended a cult of fishermen called the Malingerers, who were trying to find a fish with gold scales. After a few months he got into an argument with the cult leader — he thought they were living a lie — and as he was leaving, a fisherman’s wife handed him a dog leash. “She said she was walking the dog. It was an invisible dog.”

III. Does "thumbs up, thumbs down" work in space? Erasing studies the logs of the International Space Station, ca. 2000–2001:

Watched disk 1 of "Apocalypse Now". Shep tried to explain why Robert Duvall is always wearing the black cavalry hat, but being a Navy guy, he's not sure he understands it either.

When David met Shimon...

...with INXS.

(Via Dizzyhead Dennis)

Dizzies Newsfeeds for Tuesday, September 18

The Dizzies: Bringing kittens and owners together since 2004...Best name for a movie theater: The Co-Ed. Also at Dizzyhead L.'s blog, the long-awaited wrap-up to "David Lynch Weekend" and a look at Across the Universe: "The film’s crimes are almost too diverse to list."...Jenny D muses on the soul of a copy editor—while Crude Futures finds a typo in Copy Editor newsletter....Musicwise: Dizzyhead Hua is blogging again! And check out the Gene Clark downloads at Driftwood Singers Present: "Some sort of Jimmy Webb mini peyote blowout"...I guess I won't be seeing Dragon Wars!...Update: Vocabulary builder (Adam Bresnick in the TLS): “[Clive] James’s volume is an exercise in what the psychoanalysts call ‘anamnesia’, or unforgetting, his attempt to present and preserve what he has found most vital in the culture and history that he and the rest of us have, to a greater or lesser extent, lived through over the past decades”...

Let's get digital

DL on DL.

Inland umpire

Check out my former student L.'s blog for some great writing on the recent "David Lynch Weekend" that she attended.

The woman to my right wore her long silver hair in a sort of anime chignon held up by chopsticks. Wavy tendrils fell down her long neck, on which balanced a smooth walnut head. I watched her large “transitioning” glasses fade clear from a warm, rosy brown. Her coral silk dress fell in generous folds around her yoga-toned body. Stopping before the bleachers at the back of the room, she took a cushion made of saffron fabric from her bag and placed it on the bench. She sat and removed a thin journal from her bag. The book had flowers printed on the front, and a word in black print that I couldn’t make out, but it looked like it said “dreams.”

Dr vs. Doctor

Dizzyhead Pete writes:

Your post on The ("Tha" for urban audiences?) Dizzies today -- specifically your wondering why you were thinking about being marooned on desert islands -- made me think of a current obsession of mine: watching TV shows featuring survivalists who purposefully maroon themselves on desert islands, glaciers, jungles, rafts in the middle of the ocean, and sometimes swamps. One show in particular that I recommend -- mostly for its charming, awesomely named host/survivalist, Bear Grylls -- is called Man vs. Wild. The other, which I caught a bit of last night, is less adversarial in its title, going simply with, The Survivalist. What seems like just a hokey idea fit for a bathroom book -- like one of those "1001 ways to survive _______" books -- actually becomes pretty fascinating when you can see actual worry on the host's face about whether he's going to find food, be able to build a shelter/fire before it rains/the temperature drops too low, etc. Plus there's the whole MacGyver attraction to watching some clever survivalist show you all the neat tricks you can use if you happen to find yourself, say, in the middle of the desert with a Swiss army knife and a prayer.

Both shows are on the Discovery Channel (I think), which also makes me think someone there is obsessed with the same idea, necessitating 2 shown on the same thing on the same network.

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Over at Slate, tha Jdawg weighs in on Twin Peaks, season 2...which reminds me: You know how some people say that the Lynch film isn't "Mulholland Drive" but Mulholland "Dr"? (The poster et al. doesn't actually spell out "Drive.")

The other day I had a revelation: What if it's actually Mulholland DOCTOR?!

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The NY Ukulele Festival is kind of expensive?! Anyway, the instrument is the devil's handiwork, as far as we are concerned.

Waterworld

The obscure local daily that I read has a story today about aquariums, pegged to the death of the whale shark (Ralph) at Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium. It mentions Ginger Strand's Believer piece. Here's a taste:

In an essay published in The Believer in 2005 before the Georgia Aquarium opened, Ginger Strand catalogs the relationship between aquariums and ruined ecosystems: the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California is on the old Cannery Row, made obsolete by the depletion of sardine stocks; the Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward was paid for largely by the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Settlement Fund; in the Ocean Voyager exhibit in Atlanta, there are scant and inconsistent facts about whale sharks — they reach 45, 60 or 65 feet depending on which sign is consulted — but copious details on how they were airlifted from Taiwan (“via UPS!”).

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Here's an illustration from dreams of yore.

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Also in the Times—Dizzyhead Dennis on Twin Peaks. How about this lede, eh? The kid can write!

LIKE the homecoming queen who was its resident ghost, “Twin Peaks” died young and left a ravaged but still beautiful corpse. Both demises are now inextricably linked: When David Lynch’s hit series revealed who killed Laura Palmer in the fall of 1990, it also committed a kind of symbolic suicide.