El Capitan

I don't often write about celebrity deaths here because generally they don't affect me in any deep way, even if the person in question had some kind of influence on me. Once in awhile though, someone will pass on out there and I get unexpectedly emotional.

Late last night I read about the death of actor Leslie Nielsen, who was originally from the Northwest Territories and made his name in the classic comedies Airplane! and the Naked Gun series (which was spawned from Police Squad, although I never saw any of those). Around the time I was 10 or 12, I probably thought this was the funniest man on the planet.

Anyways, as it was Sunday night and I was already sitting around trying to think of a movie to watch, I decided to pay tribute to Mr. Nielsen. Looking into his acting career, I was amazed to see that he'd been in almost 300 movies and shows. Even more interesting was the fact that until he made Airplane!, at which point he was already in his 50's, he was a dramatic actor. So I downloaded two of his old serious movies. Last night was Forbidden Planet, tonight will be the original Poseidon Adventure. In both movies he plays 'The Captain'.

R.I.P. Shirley.

Wake the Fuck Up

.



Around 2:20 in you get a close glimpse into his eyes. Eyes of a poet, junkie, b'balla and rock'n'rolla; the eyes of a Dead Man.

Its 2009 and we all seem to die repeatedly these days. I'm enthused about life by these exciting events.

Goodbye Jim.

Karmanoia

Sunday night we were over at Tom and Veronica's place on Karl Marx Str. after eating a quick dinner with Paraic and Fernelly. We figured there's not much to do on Sunday night ... but in Berlin you're nearly always proven wrong from such thoughts.

Since they live right around the corner from Karmanoia and there were rumours going 'round that they were about to be shut down by the Polizei, we blazed a quick J and headed over there. There was a small crowd out front and we learned that the Polizei had indeed shown up the night before and this was it .. the final night for the club. They were holding a private party but the word on the street (hehe, literally) was that the doors would be open to the public at midnight. The time was 11:56!...perfect for a quick spatkauf run for roadbeers. We get back and we're waiting, chatting and laughing. Oh, and outside the doors was a pile of scrap wood, possibly the first pieces of the soon-to-be-dismantled labyrinth Karmanoia was so famous for. All of a sudden the doors burst open - one guy outside was hit by a wayward piece of lumber - and a steady stream of people filter out ... there's music, interspersed with the single file line are orchestra members dressed as skeletons, a dog ... CHAOS, essentially.

What followed was an eerie silent street procession winding up through Kreuzberg and to the canal. The band played a lonely, sad tribute while the M.C. for the funeral said a few words and launched Karmanoia's front door key into a watery grave. Then ... the party started, with fireworks, firedancing, people on fire ... kinda. The walk back was much more enjoyable; everyone's mood seemed to have righted itself back to positive. Sensing this, Tom and I took a moment to duck into another spatkauf for roadbeer replenishment.

We caught up again just in time for the finale. A spontaneous dance party took place in the middle of Hermannplatz, including a hobo-ish guy (inexplicably wearing nice white pants) took an extended flute solo. Afterwards they convinced everyone to lie down there in the square, staring up while the finished with some gritty, smokey jazz tunes.

The cherry on top came right as the last composition faded out: a Polizei Paddywagon pulled up and emptied out - I really can't believe they can fit that many popo in there. There was a moment of tension as the final saxophone note drifted off, and then everyone sat up and started applauding. The Polizei didn't quite no how to react, and actually froze and started smiling bashfully. And appropriately, the crowd disintegrated, moving on to the next project.

A Lesser Known Star

Another late follow up ... In January my attention was captured - and haunted - by the story of a man found frozen to death in a Detroit warehouse. Specifically, it was the picture that stuck with me, one of the most subtly disturbing yet realistic pieces of photography I'd seen in years.

It's one of those things that will probably re-enter my mind from time to time from here on out, but tonight was the first that I thought to follow up on it. I discovered that just a few days later, this man was identified by his brother as one Johnnie, Johnnie Redding, of River Rouge. "But he wasn't homeless. Please don't call him homeless. He always had a place to go. He was loved."

Filed under worth remembering, and not just for the fact that a game of hockey was played around his corpse. R.I.P.

An Instant and Nothing Less

"Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer."

Friday night David Foster Wallace hung himself in LA.
There's not much I care to say about it ... beyond how much he inspired and affected me, there's also the quality of his writing which tends to make anything I might write seem irrelevant.
I now would like to finally finish his biography on infinity, but it's in a box, in storage, across the continent. Perhaps I owe it to him to pick up A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.

nightwalk observation

Occurred to me late, late last night:
I think I'd rather be dead than live in an apartment without a balcony....something about canned sardines and the like.