I'll take fun over cool in a heartbeat.

I have had the pleasure of photographing the Jr. High stage productions, the last being "Bye Bye Birdie". The actual play aside, I was struck by how much fun these kids were having. Especially when compared to the adult siblings and parents that came up after the performance. A few of them looked cool, good-looking, fashionable, disengaged.
Boring.
After spending an hour or two in the camaraderie of backstage, the fun was palpable. To feel of their joie de vivre was, well, fun, and anything but cool.

As a teen I longed to be cool.

What a waste.
I'll take fun over cool in a heartbeat.

After the Saturday show they had a sock-hop at the school for the cast. It wasn't cool, it wasn't awesome. It was fun. Pictured here.

Family Home Evening

scene opens:
Small girl flailing in bedroom screaming something incoherently about "treats"
cut to scene:
Celling - hear the now muffled screaming from above.
pan down:
Tween girl hugging her knees to her chest, face wet with tears and red with emotion, deep sobs still racking her as she rocks back and forth.
pan across
Two girls, another tween and a teen their bodies are racked also - with near hysterical laughter, one is focused on the sobbing girl the other looking off camera...
pan across:
A mother sitting on a couch, there is a book in her lap (scriptures) tears are also streaming down her face - she could be laughing or crying - hard to tell.
pull back
A living room, the four emotion filled occupants are grouped in a semi circle around a man standing, he is looking around slowly at the emotional carnage.
zoom in:
His face, tired, and bemused he draws a long breath to speak, "um, I guess I'll say the closing prayer..."
cut to black

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.

Put A Sock On It

Hat of the week ~ variant of 15th century sock hat.

I wear this hat when doing christmas related work, decorating the tree, supervising present opening etc.
Good memories - my first "santa hat" came as a gift from a neighbor on the first christmas with Laurie, I have a picture of that, I was wearing nothing but the hat and my underwear.
I'll have to post it.
We had bought the tree the day before for half price. Classically we had little, but the first Christmas as "us", we were quite happy.

This Christmas eve I rapped some 20 presents, most having been bought earlier in the day. Jane asked me today if there would be presents from "Santa" this year, "no" said David.
Jane, "Will you be rapping presents tonight?"
David, "yes"
Jane "To make it like there still is Santa?"
David "no, it's because I left it to the last minute"
Jane was amused.

My Dad didn't find it funny when he found out the reality of Santa. His reaction was a deeply personal one. One of deception, lied to, it was the lies that hurt.
So - there was no Santa in the Petty house the next generation, just the truth. Thanks to overwhelming social pressure we did have Christmas, but we never got presents from Santa.

Due to a magical experience Laurie had as a child, there was Santa this generation, till last year, when Anna fest up she wasn't buying it any more.

It's after 3 now, and stayed up, just a little more to post this ~ because I wanted to say I love you to my friends, but that sounds a little to much but, @#&% it's late, and I get emotional when sleep deprived.




The white sky has come down, close to the ground, the night is brightened and quieted. The sky has lain down, the ground is white with it, quieted.

To my friends. Some of whom I'm related to. Like music you make my life happier.

A Company Man

As I mentioned before I don't consider baseball caps really hats. Mainly because they are socially accepted head-ware. So when I wear my caps, I feel like I am in disguise - as a normal person. Or more accurately I feel like I am in disguise as an american.

To heighten this sense of conformity most of my caps are company hats. These are hats that were bought en-mass for a company event to be worn by company employees, to denote that they were, employees.

I have had a strict policy about logo-ed attire, since my time of hanging out with radicalized university students. (This was before I actually became a student and actually attended a radical campus, radical in the fact that it was so conservative it bore the distinction of being one of the only universities NOT to have student protests during the 60's).
That policy was NO LABLES. I refined that to "if I'm going to ware a company logo they better be paying me to advertise for them." I have stuck to that policy.

For a history of baseball caps.

Music Makes Me Happier

These are albums, and occasionally the songs that take me to time and place, they were the sound track of my life.

From about 1983 until my Mission I listened to music a LOT of the time, because I had limited means, the music like my wardrobe was on, again and again. Often they were lost, and so when I hear them again it takes me back.

I plan on continually updating this, and expanding on the music, and why it was significant to me.

1983
Simple Minds - 81-82-83-84
The Cure - Faith
B52's - B52's
Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriels 3rd self titled album
Yazoo - Upstairs at Eric's
Eurithmics - Sweet Dreams

1984
Talking Heads - Take me to the River
OMD - Dazzle Ships
New Order - Power Corruption and Lies
Kraftwerk - Computer World
Madness - One Step Beyond...
Eurithmics - Touch
The Cure - The Walk
Heaven 17 - Penthouse and Pavement
The Smiths - The Smiths
The The - Soul Mining
Japan - Oil on Canvas
Human League - Travel Log, Dare
DEVO - New Traditionalists
Depeche Mode - Speak and Spell
Midnight Oil - 10987654321

1985
Flock of Seagulls - Flock of Seagulls, Listen
Blue nile - Walk Across The Rooftops
Ice House - Flowers
Fiat Lux - Hired History
The Cure - Head on the Door - Jason and the southern Road Trip
OMD - Organization, Architecture and Morality, CRUSH
New Order - Everything's Gone Green
Depeche Mode - Some Great Reward

1986
Fine Young Cannibals - Fine Young Cannibals
Peter Murphy - Should The World Fail To Fall Apart Don
The Cult - Love
Big Country- The Crossing
OMD - Crush

1987
Billy Brag - Talking to Taxman About Poetry, Spy vs. Spy
Shriekback - Big Night Music, Care, Jam Science, Oil & Gold
English Beat - Best of. Strongly tied to Su-Lin
Simple Minds - Empires and Dance Paul
Smiths - Meat Is Murder, The Queen Is Dead
The The - Infected
Talk Talk - Color of Spring Su
China Crisis - Difficult Shapes & Passive Rhythms, Working with Fire and Steel, Flaunt the Imperfection, What Price Paradise
Love and Rockets - Express, Seventh Dream of a Teenage Heaven
OMD - Pacific Age
David Silvian - Brilliant Trees
Fad Gadget - Gag
U2 - Indian Summer Sky - after I first kissed Su as I went home
Crowded House - Crowded House
Depeche Mode - Music For The Masses

1988
Sinead OConnor - The Lion and the Cobra
Sisters Of Mercy - Floodland, The Damage Done, Body Electric, Alice, The Reptile House EP, Temple of Love, Body and Soul, First and Last and Always
Sugar Cubes - Life's Too Good
AhHa - Hunting High and Low
The Church - Starfish listing to it while working at the hospital

New Order - Substance

1989
Enya - Watermark
Sisters Of Mercy - First and Last and Always,
New Order - Technique
Mauve - Mauve
The Smiths - Strangeways Here we Come
The The - Mind Bomb
Chill's - Kaleidoscope World, Brave Words,The Lost EP
Dead Can Dance - Dead Can Dance, Spleen and Ideal, Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, The Serpents Egg

Mission Years 1989 - 1991
B52's - Love Shack Darwin Post Office
The Mission 3 tracks from Laurie
Bauhaus - Acoustic Track from Laurie
Cat Stevens - Moon Shadow Laurie
The Church - song Reptile would play a lot in my head

1991
Peter Murphy - Deep
David Silvian - Secrets of the Beehive Linked to Laurie - she sent it me
This Mortal Coil - Laurie
Suzanne Vega - Days Of Open Hand

1992
Sisters Of Mercy - Vision Thing Courting Laurie
Crowded House - Into Temptation Making out with Laurie in my Apartment in Provo

1993
His Name Is Alive - Livonia, Home Is In Your Head
This Mortal Coil - Blood
The Chills - Submarine Bells
Creatures - Boomerang
DeadCanDance - Into The Labyrinth
Suzanne Vega - 99.9F°
Shriekback - Sacred City

1994
Dead Can Dance - Toward The Within
Dead Can Dance - song - American Dreaming Makes me think of Laurie & I
The Jam - Greatest Hits Laurie introduces me to
Men Without Hats -Men Without Hats

1998
Madonna - Ray of Light

1999
Alphaville - Forever Young

2006
Ladytron - 604, Light and Magic

2008
This year seemed to be a reawakening in me of music as an intrigal - indispensable part of living. Two things, and ipod will all my music on, and having to spent 30 min. to 2 hrs. a day running errands and realizing if I was surrounded by music it became very bearable. Finally was Mobys Hotel, it reminded me how discovering new music is not a subtle process but an explosion of something akin to joy when you find that resonating cord in you.
Moby - Hotel

Cheesecake

Cheese + Cake how could that possibly be good? It's an unnatural, an unholy combination! There was NO WAY that the young Paul Leach could be forced to eat such an abomination. He withstood all entreaties to partake.

Then - one day, as grown man something happened (did it have to do with Allison?) and he a a peace of Cheesecake.
Oh the regret! The sorrow! All those wasted YEARS! A life hardly worth living, now made complete with the wonder of CHEESECAKE.

That was Paul's story he once relayed to me about cheese cake.

Living as a poor boy of limited culinary experience, I don't think I even had the opportunity until later in life to eat cheesecake. I was unimpressed.

It was only later I discovered I had chosen a side to which all of humanity falls - the side that like cheesecake and those that, just "have something wrong with them," as Su-Lin Fantella almost wrote.

No one gets to be over 40 without laving a cheesecake story of there own - here is mine.

I was newly Married and a student, as was my lovely young bride. We we summering with her parents, working to diminish some of our debts during the break. The location, Marin County - just out of San Francisco - some of the most expensive real-estate in the U.S. That obviously means some of the best bakeries in the nation.

Len, my brides father came from a humble laboring background and did just about all he could to forget that. One of those ways was to go and patronize the best bakeries, and bring home their wares.

In an act of generosity and bonding one night he came home with probably one of the best cheesecakes in the world, it was ostensibly a gift for me. What could I do? I graciously accepted. It was, cheesecake - undoubtably the best cheesecake I had ever had - but, still cheesecake.
I'd have rather had, I don't know - cherry pie... I said it was the best cheesecake I had ever had - and ended there. Len was happy, Laurie, my lovely young bride, relieved, and all was well.

But then, not more than a few days passed but Len brings home another cheesecake, for me. On the third occasion, I could see the lie stretching out before me, down the years... Len bringing cheesecake every time he visited, or perhaps cheesecake care packages when we lived too far for him to drive, Thanksgiving cheesecake, Christmas...

I knew what I had to do. The years of watching american sitcoms had taught me one thing, don't lie to make someone feel better, painful as that would be, the lie becomes more painful, and although hilarity will ensue, it's not funny if your the guy in the situation comedy.

So I told Len that I didn't like Cheesecake. He bought me no more cheesecake, but he never did get me any cherry pie.

Trilby

Trilby -- it's like a Fedora (that's an Indiana Jones hat for the Hat nube), but with a narrower brim. Typically they were made from felt or wool. My trilby is made from straw, in china. I have been wanting one for a few years now and when I saw it this summer in WALMART I simply rejoiced.
So this hat is my most resent head-ware acquisition. Ironically the very first hat I wore, really wore, on a day to day basis was a very similar straw hat in South Australia. I actually wore that one out.
According to an undocumented wikipedia entry the name for this style of hat came from a very popular novel of the same name. The novel was subsequently turned into a play and one of the actors in the play wore a narrow brimmed fedora - and the name of the play/book was forever attached to this style of hat.
In my mind this style has been linked to the end of hats as we know them as everyday ware for men, and can still be occasionally seen being worn by very old men, hipsters, mods, and jazz heads.
I find it simultaneously easier and more difficult to be outside of fashion. Not eschewing fashion wholly, but being interested in it disconnected from time and place. Basically that means you seek after fashion that you like, unrelated to the fashion of the day.
It's easier in that you don't have to spend time and money on keeping up with what's current. The downside of which is being an outsider, to some degree. The best example of this ascetic in popular culture was portrayed by the character Kramer in the sitcom Sinfeild, who was once described by the most fashionable character (Elaine) as a "hipster doofus".

Black Cap

All the hats I have acquired in the last few years have been from the temple of elemental evil, or WALMART™ as some people call it. This is due to it's proximity, and the fact that it's not squeamish about child labor so I can make impulse hat buys and not break $10.

I came across this hat and I loved it instantly. I have wanted one for some years and got it in black and green, (the green one will get it's own post).

I really like the style, it put's me in mind of one of the most stylish thugs of the 20th century - the nazi. I think my sense of style is genetically inherited. My father confessed he nearly joined the Hitler Youth movement (Canadian chapter) in the 30's because he "liked the look of their uniform". Fortunately the second world war broke out before he got around to signing up.

I did some research on the hat - as all that was inside the cap was "made in china". In my exhaustive research for this post I believe the style is "army cap".