Yeah some folk aren't cut out to be parents and somehow this little gal isn't cut out to own a dolly. What self respecting dollymama would hold precious baby like some organ grinders monkey? I don't blame the little gal- she probably wanted a sling shot or marbles. Yet I can't help but hope she didn't go on to raise a brood of her own.

Doesn't this look amazing? You can do amazing things too!

I like to fiddle with my PHOTOSHOP filters. I used the one where you find the edges and what you get is a line drawing of the photo. I like color pencil drawing and this ends up looking like one. (I also manipulated the color and all that but I do find this miraculous.) Yes the original was quite striking too but they do compare well. If you have PHOTOSHOP perform your own Sunday miracle.

I forget who directed this thing but he did a good job. See it. The kid on the right belongs to a religious sect that doesn't allow kids to watch TV. He runs into the kid on the left who is smart and screwed up and making a Rambo film. What I loved most was a book of scribblings/drawings by the kid on the right. It made me want to do a picture diary for my own pleasure. The director also uses animation in unexpected places in what is mostly a smart film about friendship. There are adults peppered through out but it is all pretty much the kids point of view. And yes we see quite a bit of their film making. SON OF RAMBOW available on NETFLIX.

Yeah this Gautier model is pin thin but what really bothers me is that a Chinese robe was cut up so the sleeves could be made into boots. And they don't work as boots.

An over-sized necklace that would look good on Barbara Bush in the Bahamas does not work as a choker on this lady. The stylist should be fired.

This is a DO. If you have a broken computer take it apart.There is something satisfying and disconcerting. Satisfying because you go against the instinct to treat this object with deference. Tearing all the keys off was yummy. Then I did use a screw driver but once I got to s certain point it was kitchen knives and pliers. What was disconcerting or weird was to see the junk that a computer is made of. I mean in the past precious meant silver, gold, rubies, needlework, fine papers. This thing is crappy plastic and junky metal and nothing aesthetic. But yet it does so much. Can't get my mind around it just like I have never REALLLY understood how television works.

Remember these? My prof. in grad school used to wear one. If you are looking for 70s and 80s rags check out THE RUSTY ZIPPER here.

My jones for Japan.

I've always had a jones for Japan. Probably started with an interest in the aesthetic but then the local experience of the internment in the USA took over. It seemed such an important and under reported story when I was in college. In grad school I was taken with japanese migration to South America. I knew there were colonies in Brazil, Colombia and Peru because of students I had met from those countries. They easily passed as locals, most families were economically well off and it was only the last names that gave a clue to the original migration.
Years have gone by and now I find myself back where I started. Japan. And Akira Kurosawa's life work on film.
I LIVE IN FEAR takes place in Japan after the war. The patriarch of the family Nakajima is afraid another bomb will be dropped but seems to think emigrating to Brazil would keep his family safe. The kids --all adults--disagree and pressure their mother into trying to declare the dad incompetent so as to safeguard their inheritance. Kurosawa is like Hitchcock in the control he exercised over each scene. The use of black and white film and the devastated 1950s urban landscape made me feel it was already hell in Tokyo. Yet the younger generation is looking quite chipper in western fashion, smoking and seemingly into the new way of living among the ruins. Nakajima, the patriarch is also in a suit but he looks a bit out of place in it. His wife wears a kimono and in some street scenes you still women in kimono and geta rushing across the streets.
Kurosawa seems to be talking about insanity. The insanity of inventing a bomb that could destroy the world, the insanity of thinking any place is safer than another and the insanity of avoiding the truth that the world was not a safe place period. Kurosawa made 5 films focused on the post war life in Japan.
My initial impulse was to see how the bombing of Hiroshima and Tokyo was represented in Japanese film. (With our despicable behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan it brought back how we avoid facing up to what we did during WWII.) We are always shining a light on the Nazis--why not look closer to home when we discuss atrocities. Indeed it seems that is what history is all about--if done well it is a way of not forgetting our disgraceful behavior. This country has such a long list.