"I do my best work on the couch, too... sleepin'. "
—Mom, when it came up that I often work while sitting on the couch
10/25/11 NOTE: It's been 3 years since I'd last updated this homepage, and the rest of the site is frozen in the early-to-mid 2000s. I've thrown around the idea of revamping the site, but so far it hasn't been a priority. Maybe I should leave it as a snapshot of a time and start a new site to document my current interests. Below is an overview of the last few years.
I moved from Louisville back to my hometown in Michigan in early 2009, wanted to have a real garden and be close to my grandparents, who I'd missed out on a lot of good years with.
I wanted to have a bit of land to practice permaculture and forest gardening on, so I ended up buying 3 acres of dry, sandy, vacant flat land from my grandma in Lawton. Since taking it over in early 2010, I've been very busy planting scores of fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, companion plants, and a regular organic vegetable garden, as well as bringing truckload upon truckload of organic matter (leaves, woodchips, horse manure, brush, straw, etc) to improve the soil. As with anything there have been setbacks and failures, but so far I'm quite pleased with how things are going and find a lot of beauty and contentment there.
In other huge news, I also met, fell in love with, and got married to a beautiful Japanese lady named Maki. Like me, she is a vegan, into gardening, skateboarding, cooking, cats, bicycling, travel, and more. She grew up in the largest city in the world (Tokyo), so moving to small-town Lawton is a bit of an adjustment, but she's making a go of it. She'd never driven a car before, because in Japan you can go through your entire life without ever having to, on account of the great train system and more active lifestyle in general. She moved here in August, which was fortunate, since it was prime season for fresh garden produce. Winter might be another matter, since it seldom snows in Tokyo!
I made a couple of trips to Japan in the last year or so, one last October (we got married on 10/5/10) and one in late February (photos still not posted from that trip, been too busy gardening to do a good job on photo-uploading). I left Japan just one day before the Tsunami disaster; fortunately Maki's family didn't suffer any substantial damages as they aren't from that part of the country.
Still working from home on a contract/freelance basis, that's going fine and allows me a flexible schedule to spend some time on the many garden chores. We hope to maybe sell a few things at the farmer's market next year. Speaking of which, I bought a house in Lawton right across the street from the park where the market is held. It was kind of a cheapie foreclosure deal, in somewhat rough shape but got it for a good price. Not our dream home but it beats paying rent and it'll do for now.
I'm a lot more interested in trees, plants and vegetables nowadays than I am in scooters, which may surprise a lot of people. When I moved back to MI I felt I had to get a 4-wheeled vehicle if I wanted to go anywhere beyond my town, since the roads are far too treacherous in winter for the scooter to handle (plus my $700 Ranger pickup has paid for itself many times over with the stuff I can haul away for free in it). I rode the scooter across the state last fall to hear Draplin's big yarn in Detroit, and the sonofabitch (scooter) died on me and left me stranded on the roadside 100 miles from home. Sadly, that's at least the fourth time that's happened, and it's not a lot of fun. I think maybe the CDI went bad, but I haven't ever bothered to figure it out, so for now it's just collecting dust. The cats are healthy and chubby and getting older.
That's about it for now, I know I skipped a lot but those should cover the basics and bring us into the current year. Look for my holiday cards sometime after the new year, ha!
Pickpocket (B+W, France, 1959)
Saw this on a whim when I should've been working on freelance projects instead, but I'm really glad I did. The reviews all referred to a sort of magical quality to Robert Bresson's filmmaking, and talked about how "realistic" his films seem, devoid of flashy cinematic effects, gimmicks, or overzealous acting. It's true, this film was very straightforward in its depiction of a man who decides to try his hand at becoming a pickpocket, half out of boredom and half out of desperation. We feel tension as he learns his trade through intense closeness to the subjects and powerful silence. The story is based loosely on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, which I intend to read ASAP. The actors and Parisian settings were very handsome to my eyes, even Michel the main character in his shabby suit looked dapper by today's slovenly standards of casual dress. And the young woman who looks after his mother, Jeanne...what a beauty! She reminded me a little of Ashlee Simpson (who I think is cute) but 1,000 times more class and depth. Even his miserable rented room (whose door gets left wide open to the world as he goes out, almost unthinkable in today's world...maybe rare then too, but he had little to hide or be stolen, very spartan tenement-house living) was full of charm to me, run-down but so unlike the cinderblock prisons people dwell in here. Great visuals and lighting, perfect acting (or non-acting, as it might be) amazing sets and streetscapes, beautifully-done sound and even some damn nice opening and closing titles. I can't wait to see more of Bresson's work, this film really resonated with me.
Driver 23 / The Atlas Moth (USA, 2002)
I borrowed this DVD from Luther/Will and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite films (Vanessa's too). I ordered myself a copy and also ordered a copy to send to Ryan. If you liked American Movie or Spinal Tap, or have ever been in a band or lived in Minneapolis, this film is a must-see. Like American Movie, it's a story set in a north midwestern city in the late 1990's and featuring a charismatic, "out-there" protagonist driven to succeed in his creative endeavor (as the frontman for a progressive metal band in this case). The main guy here is Dan Cleveland, a heavily-medicated obsessive-compulsive guy driven to succeed and "see things through" by a chemically-imbalanced fire burning hot in his brain. It's hard to describe the film(s), you should just see them. Nobody I've recommended them to didn't like them. Dan's monologues are both sad and heroic, but relentlessly entertaining. His drawings (what little we see of them) are even better. Very well-done documentaries following the same few people over the course of 7 or so rough years in the pursuit of playing shows and putting out a CD, full of wonderful characters. Especially relevant to me because I lived in Minneapolis while most of this was being filmed so the setting/venues really speak to me. Among other things, Draplin had this to say about the film: "So many different little lives out there. Wow." Fuckin' A.
