Never Not Hip

He was cool.

Breaking from what the mainstream deemed as fashionable and defined his own sense of style.
(There are plenty of people who have there own sense of style, but that's usually due to the fact that they are hopelessly clueless of what is style).
With full knowledge, of totally "getting it", he defined himself another way. For those who new what was "in" would get this person and know they were truly cool, even though he did not conform to what was "in".

As the years passed he opted for total non-fashion. But, knowing this person, you knew this was a deliberate move, and one done on a conscious level, for personal reasons. (Unlike the rest of us who, couldn't afford it, were too tired, and just defeated).
Although he now looked completely unremarkable, you knew he was still, so, truly cool.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Phil Story, Laurie's first boyfriend.



I saw a recent photo of a lost friend the other day. She was, and still is, a casualty of my life getting full of school work, children, marriage, and location.

I miss Deana.

I liked to be associated with her, because I was made cooler by that association. I should say, it made me appear cooler, because, if you knew her, and you knew I was her friend then you would think... "David must be some-what cool for Deana to be his friend."

In her recent picture, Deana does not look cool.

But I know that, that is a deception.

No matter how Deana looks, what she does or where she lives, it is cool. Because she is doing it.

There is nothing that can make Deana Petronella Martin uncool - she is never not hip.

The Movie List ~ Ferris Bueller's Day Off

I know I know, for people of a certain age liking this is like saying "I like top 40 music"

Still, I do like it. But...

I mentioned before seeing a movie at the "right" time can make the experience profound, magical, or really funny.
I had somehow missed this, which is surprising because, don't think I ever missed a $2.50 Tuesday while in Vancouver, when this was released, but... somehow... missed it.
So I rented it while house sitting, in Putaruru - in 1989, profoundly by myself - you know, at the end of the "year of melancholy."
It was the wrong time to see it. I actually remember thinking, I would have loved this, had I seen it, years ago.
Still it came to mind in the time alloted so it makes the list - I think however John Hughes recent death may have unfairly advantaged it in the pile of stuff in my brain.

Seen on my own 1989 on video in Putaruru.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off
The Movie List

The Movie List ~ The Navigator

The second movie from my year of melancholy is a New Zealand/Australian collaboration before there was really any kind of "A Grade" film industry. In my personal estimation it was the best New Zealand film to that date. Typically the NZ film industry was really B type stuff.
I remeber going to see a NZ movie in Vancouver that was so bad it made me not want to go home.

Unlike The Glass Menagerie I remember this film very well, beautiful in it's imagery, wonderful in it's story.
The criteria for this list was the first movies that quickly come to mind, which this did, but this movie would also make my all time top 20.

Seen on my own in 1989. Hamilton movie theater.
The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey
The Movie List

OF NOTE: When I first started to court Laurie in 1991 I wanted to share this movie with her. She had already seen it - and liked it. This was one of a long list of things that made me think, "she's so cool".

The Movie List ~ The Glass Menagerie

The second chapter of melancholy was drawing to a close.
I was on my own, in Putaruru, once a week I'd catch a bus into Hamilton, for some company at my sisters flat. I would also watch a movie. I saw three movies that have made the list during this period.

I have never seen it since, and can only remember a few fragments of the actual movie. What I really remember is thinking, that it was really, really good. I shall have to see it again...



Seen on my own in 1989. Hamilton movie theater.
Glass Menagerie
The Movie List

The Movie List ~ Groundhog Day

I saw this on video in the early 90's after overhearing someone talking about the plot. I view this movie like scripture. I find it deeply metaphorical of mortality and the purpose of mortal life.
We can take only what we learn with us, and even more significantly, we take us, with us. There are many other profound insights into the human condition, and what brings lasting happiness.

Oh, and very funny.

Saw with Laurie, 1993. In 1920's apartment that was our first residence together.
Ground Hog Day
The Movie List

The Movie List ~ Room With A View

Things become more perfect in the past, happy pasts.
This was one of the movies that makes my list - not because it's a throughly enjoyable movie - which it was, but because it was a romance, and there in my life, if not romance, something very much like it for the first time.
So I feel, an echo of that when I watch it.

Watched in Vancouver 1987 - with Su-Lin and Tina.
Notable aside, full frontal male nudity, much to the mirth of the girls.

Room with A View
The Movie List

Movies that came to mind

One of the the many, chain-letter/virus/game things that have flown about face book was - list your favorite movies without thinking about it - 15 in 15 min. Well this was my list pulled from my mental files in less than 10 minutes but greater than 15 in number.

Like music, movies are an emotional code. A secret language that if you find another that speaks it, they are raised to a level of emotional regard that would usually take months of regular interaction.

Yet, movies will be given emotional significance because of the time, place and where you are at emotionally when you watched them. If watched at another time, they would be hardly remembered.

I feel each deserves it's own post - so starting with the first they shall.

1. A Room With A View
2. Groundhog Day
3. The Glass Menagerie
4. The Navigator
5. Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Jim Dale Is Not My Friend (but I get confused)

A couple of months ago I was walking out of work, putting on my head phones, looking for what I was going to listen to. I felt anticipation, I had something great I was going to listen to, something I loved. Was it the Harry Potter book I had on the ipod, or something else? An emotion shivered through me. It was the combination of happiness, longing and melancholy. It was strange, yet, familiar. That thrill of emotion, something from long ago. I remembered. It was the emotion I felt when I was going to listen to the voice of a friend.

Years ago when separated by many oceans I hit upon sending talk tapes to my friends. Paul, Magna, Laurie and Wendy responded in kind. For a couple of years many such tapes were exchanged. I loved it.

I realized that afternoon that is part of why I like to listen to podcasts and audio books. It has an echo of those tapes.

But. I want to hear from my friends. I want to hear them.
I found the tapes really enjoyable and comforting. I liked it better than phone conversations, as I could respond when it was a good time for me, and, I could be far more intelligent and witty. As typically it takes about a day for me to come up with a good response, to anything.
I liked it better than writing because I am a slow writer, and I think meaning can be clearer when you hear someone.

I liked it because I could keep it, and listen to it, again.

Goal:
Pod cast. It will probably be an audio journal, but maybe it will turn into something else.
Goal: Digitalize those tapes. Yes, those tapes, circa 1989-1991. Pod cast selections from them.

Ultimate Goal: Spark conversations with my friends, such as I have seen on facebook and blogs.
I love conversations with people I love.

The very slightly subversive cap.

Baseball cap = unremarkable, perfectly socially acceptable head ware, especially if it has a logo, showing you are part of something, supporting a popular soda, or sports team.

Back baseball cap - with nothing, no trim, no logo, nothing - just black. Cap, very normal, but absence of color or tribal badge, that is very slightly, abnormal.

Very slightly subversive.

Your Picture Here

Su-Lin Fantella (Australia) wrote
at 1:14pm yesterday
Karen, why do you stay out of photos? You look GREAT and exactly the same as you always have!!! Don't shy away from the camera, lady!

Karen Runquist (Calgary, AB) wrote
at 1:18pm yesterday
Su-
like you I a not all that comfortable in front of the camera. I think that's why I became the resident photographer, just so I would have an excuse to stay out of the frame!! PS- thanks :o)
----
I read the above exchange and, after resisting my first impulse to comment on the irony of who was making the comment (an impulse that I obviously just succumbed to) I began to write on Karins "wall" in face book about why she should be in more pictures. I discovered that yes there is a limit to wall posts (1000 characters). So I moved my comments here.

My theory about why you should have your picture taken, now.

1. First you have to accept the idea that youth = beauty.

2. Then you can accept that you are never going to look better tomorrow than you do today (see youth = beauty above 1). So more pictures now = better pictures. Also reference my pictures from 20 years ago and your pictures from the same time - don't you wish you had more because youth = beauty. Now you may think that it's too late as youth is gone therefore beauty has left, that is true only if you die tomorrow. Believe me, you look way better now than you do at sixty.

3. Also - to be considered, you are not invisible. Wether or not someone takes a picture of you, they can still see you, having your photo taken dose not make you visible.

4. Be in as many pictures as possible, more pictures of you = greater chance of good pictures. People like to post good pictures, or really bad ones. The really bad ones make you look like a good sport thus making you look good anyway. (Magna is a supreme example of this).

5. "But I'm fat. I don't want my picture taken." Again reference #3. Also consider it as before picture, you know. You see these people who have lost weight and either there is no picture or some grainy awful image. You may think - "I'm never going to get thinner" - then reference reason 2. Also this smacks of "waiting to be happy" the idea that happiness is something that will happen later, after a certain event like, being rich, or thin. Those may bring happiness, but why wait? Enjoy the journey, and who doesn't take pictures of journeys? Stupid people, that's who.

6. Do it for the children. As an act of love. I heard a piece on the radio about this guys mom who despised the idea of having her picture taken and always disparaged others as a pointless exercise. After her death he and his sister stumbled upon a few seconds of film footage of her walking out of a door at some family reunion. They watched it over and over, it was the only image they had of her. I don't doubt that she would have thought that stupid - but it mattered to them.
I love my pictures of my mom, especially the ones that are perhaps unflattering, the unposed shots, this is her. I love her and always have from the my earliest memories, I don't know why having images of her make me glad but they do.

7. Finally. It is important, I don't know why it's important, not really. But I know it is. Ultimately the only pictures you will regret are the ones that were never taken.

I dreamt a dream

I had a dream last night, I was in London, boarding the Titanic with Laurie, Tony, Su-lin, Cam and Elaine.
This wasn't the original Titanic, but a restoration. I noted that Tony and Cam were getting on really well, and I was saying that my Grandmother had survived the original sinking*. We were walking the length of the ship. I then found myself and about half a dozen others on a lifeboat off the ship. We were told they had overbooked and we couldn't stay on.
I returned to port and watched the ship sail without me, but with Laurie, Su, Tony, Elaine and Cam still on board.
I waited at the dock, which now began more and more to resemble an airport, or train terminal.
As I waited I sorted through my satchel and my camera back popped oven briefly - probably ruining the film in it.

I woke, feeling vaguely depressed.

*(this is not true, but in the dream it was).

Hat Metamorphosis

This was originally bought as a "summer" cotton Greek Fisherman's Hat, in Sanoma - on my honeymoon I think. I bought a wool one too, but certain hats I just can't seem to hang on too, wool Greek fisherman's hats and berets.

I think I was able to hang on to this one because I made the choice to wash it, in the washing machine. Don't EVER do this if you want your hat to look remotely the same as it was when it went in. My hat's aren't "collectibles" I ware them, a lot. This means they get dirty.

After the wash it was a cap, yes, but not a fisherman's hat. Turns out it wasn't exactly color-fast and the bill if the cap I think was stiffened with cardboard. This wash made it look, well "legitimate" comes to mind. In no way would some one ware this as a statement of style, it was the real thing, what thing I discovered while researching some of my other hats.

I saw a picture of a cap, and it was called a "fiddlers" cap. I'm pretty sure that was attached to the style after Fiddler of the Roof. Although the style itself is very old - predating even the early nineteen seventy's. I tried to find out how old, but the difficulty level exceeded my determination and so I gave up.

What I DID discover is hat's are REALLY out of Vogue. In my search I came a across a site that looked like it was designed about ten years ago. It had a links page, of the eleven links, nine of them were dead. One looked like an even earlier design. It made me feel really special.

To re-cap (pun intended) My Greek Fisherman's Hat turned into a Fiddlers Cap, and being interested in hat history is very, very fringe.