12/16/01
Beethovens birthday today, I don't know why I always remember that. Probably the ravenous diet of Peanuts cartoons from deep in my formative years, and just as kismet would have it, we watched "A Charlie Brown Christmas" tonight. I was struck at the crudeness of the animation, and how the vocal editing was strung together in a way that makes the kids sound like they recorded the entire show without breathing. I was also struck at how beautiful and simple the show is - even the rampant Jesus stuff sounds perfectly logical coming from Linus in his little soliloquy on the stage.
I drove to Shelter Island today, which is a pretty rotten journey. The mess of highways that emerge from the Midtown Tunnel suck to be sure, but the whole idea of a car ferry twice in one day - is basically a dealbreaker. Just like they planned it, I guess, to keep brown people from cavorting on the island. When I got to Dad and Carole's Kountry Estate, I suddenly realized why they are selling: it has about one-seventieth the charm of their current sprawling compound in Napa, and positively zero cachet. Still, there's a bunch of their shit in the garage (including that super 1971 collage of my dad's press releases shellacked onto a giant piece of driftwood, yikes) and I struggled to get the dining room table out.
I recognized it as the "nice" table from our childhood, the one that the guests ate on, as opposed to the beat-up veneer we used for everyday life, which could have easily been a ping-pong table but for a few twists of fate in the journey of that piece of wood. Of course, this "fancy" table in Dads garage is now beat-up and about three decades behind in fashion (parquet top!) but seems very sturdy. Unable to screw the legs off, I had to lash it to the top of the Land Rover and sped off down I-495, no doubt to the rabid jealously of my fellow travelers.
Tonight, I sat up with Tessa, who has been missing her father a lot lately. Blakey died a week after the terrorist attack (and by all accounts was not terribly interested in it) but Tessa has been Josephine Distraction for the better part of three months, and now that the holidays are in full swing, she misses having a dad around for Christmas, even one that is far away. We talked about the future of Asset Pictures, her paralysis in the face of the mountain of mundane tasks awaiting her, and I began to feel that I was healthier than her in at least one respect: I dont let my personal life minutiae get in the way of avoiding it. More specifically, I think I'm good at big projects because a) I am pretty deft at beginning things, even if they're bad, because I approach them using a certain stream-of-consciousness; and b) I don't seem to have any "finishing issues." I've heard of people having finishing issues, and frankly, it seems sort of silly to me. The only thing I had trouble finishing was "Ivanhoe."
Tonight I went to the usual Christmas party at the Pinckert girls place on St. Marks - somehow I find myself there every year, regardless of where I actually live in the country. Liz Mann accompanied me, and it was really good to have her there. Under no circumstances could I have waltzed in there solo and felt like staying for more than a nanosecond - with her, at least, one can comment on the silliness afoot without plunging into useless solipsism. And while I didn't know very many people there to begin with, the second we put our coats on to leave, a bevy of old friends paraded through the door: Celeste, Diane, the nutty Brandy, and even Alex Yong and Wendy. Original Pink House resident Tom Holden was there as well, and in a flash, I realized how long it had been since actually being at a party with the old crowd. Probably not since my own party exactly a year ago tonight.
I was put back into the mood by a website I found today, cobbled together by a guy named Gus who befriended a group of girls in Charlottesville in the early 90s and ended up living in this house they called Big Fun. The place eventually grew into central Virginia's cultural metaphor, a Gen X hangout/commune that housed a bunch of folks vaguely peripheral to the UVA scene. There is a glossary online at:
http://www.spies.com/~gus/bigfun/
that is deeply analogous to the scene we created in Chapel Hill (albeit without the heroin and Robitussin abuse) and temporarily made me long for the days when I was surrounded those incredible people for so many years. I do pretty well not to romanticize the decade or so I spent in Chapel Hill, and I think I have a pretty healthy understanding of the mess we were in back then. But the swirling scene of the early to mid-90s provided more creative petrol than most people experience in a lifetime. Im sad for the folks that are still stuck there (indeed, the Charlottesville "Big Fun" scene seemed to disintegrate under the corrosive blend of phone bills, gas companies and untrustworthy housemates as well) but we part of something really great, and unless I write a glossary myself, really unsung.
Perhaps thats what the Pink House movie is all about, but I doubt it. Entire swaths of that experience were lost in the translation, and what we have now is something vastly different. Movies don't capture "scenes" very well, at least the word in its most cliquish, zeitgeist-sense. If you weren't there, you don't get it, and a movie won't give it to you. Any attempt to recreate it will seem "twee" at best and "nauseously self-involved" at worst. I can only hope the movie we made about the Pink House makes people laugh, and any resemblance to the "scene" where I lived will be accidental, tertiary, and a delightful surprise.
Speaking of the Pink House and tertiary accidents, C was at the party tonight. I took Liz up into the sequestered room where C and E were chatting, knowing full well C wanted nothing more than to escape my presence. As usual, I stormed in there, asking her questions, being a simple, swell dude. Coming down the stairs, Liz asked "Was somebody making someone uncomfortable up there?" I said, "It was me, baby, all me."