Since my last post I have done the following:
Finished designing and printing my holiday cards just before leaving town. Pics of finished piece to follow when I have more ambition; looks kind of like the photoshop preview but worse, plus a whole heap of tiny, nearly-illegible text inside.
Traveled to MI for 3.5 days for the holidays, caught a ride with the Toliusis brothers and a ride back with my roommate Karen who was on her way back from the Detroit area. It was a good few days in Michigan, got to visit with some relatives I hadn't seen in a while and some that I see plenty often. In addition to the family, I also took some photos of familiar roads and houses as well as some around downtown Lawton, my holiday photos can be seen here. The photos look kind of dark because I just got a new monitor at home (19" flatscreen Samsung, pretty nice) and hadn't quite calibrated it correctly, so my apologies; now it's cranked up nice and dark to simulate a PC gamma.
I had the treat of seeing Ryan Simonson and his lady Melissa on New Year's Eve-eve and NYE day, had a few meals, shared our gripes, went to a couple of low-down taverns for "yuppie drinks" like Old Style, shared some music and watched Hands on a Hardbody (out of print! what!?!), which they'd never seen. They wanted to get back to Mpls for the midnight, so I bid them adieu and then Vanessa came over and we spent the evening watching bad movies together since our respective lady- and gentleman-friends were out of town for NYE.
I've been posting more photos to Flickr; not amazing ones, just some of the ones I've recently taken. You may or may not have noticed that this page now has a shittily-designed "feed" of 6 or 8 recent Flickr photos that are automatically updated, it's about halfway-down on the left. In any case, I'm uploading them slowly but surely, once I catch up on recent ones I'll start chipping away at some of the Sign photos, I have a thousand or more that I've taken over the last few years that are languishing in hard drive limbo, waiting for their big chance to make it to hyperspace. Eventually I'll be using Flickr's tagging function to pull a bunch of them back onto this website in the relevant areas, see some popular tags like great typography, vanishing Chicago, typical Chicago housing, plastic sign, building as sign, etc. Lots and lots of photos to upload, but it takes time. Someone want to hire me to do this full-time so that I don't have to work a normal job? Sign me up.
Went to my friend Rene's house for a nice NYD party in the afternoon, great vegan food, good conversation and even karaoke! Otherwise I've been working a lot, I've sent out almost all of my holiday cards (still have a few stragglers sitting here, mostly to Japan). I'm still seeing the sweet and lovely girl I mentioned last time, nothing too serious at this point but it is going well and we enjoy each other's company. She was able to make it all the way through Hell Riders with me, so that says something about her. She said she'd never seen a movie like that before, to which I replied "there's a lot more where that came from." Her D-movie education begins at the Chmiel Institute.
Speaking of truly fantastic movies, I was lucky enough to catch a showing of Be Here to Love Me, the new documentary about Townes Van Zandt. God damn, I actually wept a few tears in the theater. I've always loved the guy's music but never knew much about his life, this doc has tons of amazing old home-movie footage and is pretty well put-together. Not to mention the outstanding soundtrack (duh). Thanks to Ryan for originally turning me onto TVZ and thanks to the filmmakers for putting this together, I will own it on DVD when it comes out. It's not playing everywhere but if you have any soul at all and it's playing near you, run to the theater and check it out.
Other good movies I've seen lately: King of the Rubbish Dumps with Jen at the Siskel Film Center, made her miss Vietnam and me want to go even more. Ryan treated me to a bargain-bin DVD of a double feature of Johnny Cash's acting career, The Pride of Jesse Hallum and some other B/W psuedo-thriller called Five Minutes to Live that is terrible. Jesse Hallum isn't too bad, it's in color and features Eli Wallach (the Ugly from TGTBaTU) in a supporting role. Johnny plays a Kentucky coal miner who moves to the big city of Cincinnati and has to cope w/ the fact that he can't read. Good shots of that town and so-so acting and music from JC. And if that wasn't enough, Vanessa also gave me a JC-starring movie called The Last Days of Frank and Jesse James from the mid-80s, starring a Just-For-Men-Mustachio'd Cash and Kris Kristofferson as well as minor roles by June Carter, David Allan Coe and Willie Nelson. Watchable once, though not great overall.
I've been fucking dying to see the Townes movie. It was here, at the U film society for a couple days (when I worked late). So bummed.
Another can't miss Townes experience is Heartworn Highways, an amazing documentary also featuring Guy Clark, David Alan Coe, Rodney Crowell, and a glimpse of a very young Steve Earle. Vintage late 1970's outlaw country action.