i miss eli. his absence is permeating my existence and affecting my happy reality.

dahh too bad rothbury didnt work out, i really wish i was there right now. damnnnn. well i hope knief is having a fucking awesome time seein' the dead on his 21st birthday, sucks i couldnt be there with him but it just didnt work out.

ive officially moved to utah. its very slow paced out here, not a whole lot to do. but there are good people to not do a whole lot with. keely and willie's house is awesome and i love going over there. i slept there last night--i was going to sleep in her sister's room in the basement but after being in there for five minutes i realized why keely's sister doesn't sleep there. bad feng shui and scary huge black beetles everywhere. and spiders. so i slept on the couch. anywho, kelly keely willie jake and i woke up, smoked a j, and went to the fourth of july parade downtown. nice morning. i gotta go, somethings come up.

Rothbury

I NEED A RIDE TO ROTHBURY!!!!!!!!!! Anyone going?!?!?

Chapter 1: The Mission to Dream by Elizabeth A. Lennox

once there was a girl named deva and she was the heir to the throne of the Black-Regan empire in eastern Evesham. she was not a girly-girl and liked adventure; she frequently took scenic walks on The Wild Side. one day, when she had reached the age of maturity , she had a vision. the great god of Relaxation appeared before her and spoke: "Deva of the Great Black-Regans, I will appear to you in order to present you with a mission that will change your destiny." He yawned.
during this pause, deva's mind raced. she was never one to decline an opportunity to create a story of her own. Relaxation continued:
"Something very serious has offended be and i can't eat, i can't drink, and i cannot sleep. until i can do so, you and your minions and family will face the same fate that i've experienced."
deva felt a deep pity for Relaxation in this moment, for she understood that a good sleep was more precious than gold. and a good drink was worth the loss of a good sleep.
"Your Laziness," she spoke, "how may i mend the unfortunate situation that is beset upon you? it pains me to see you so active against your will, for i, too, share your love of afternoon naps and big comfy couches."
he could tell that she was sincere in her plea, so he began his tale...

"I have lived for ages, since the first Man was created and He spent his days sitting under lush fig trees to avoid the summer sun. Since then, it has been harder and harder for my presence to be felt in the mortal world. Man has fallen in love with me, but held so tightly that i've fallen out of his grasp. the harder he tries to make life easier, the more complex it becomes. you work and work and work to make money to buy things that others of your kind had to work. this cycle is only getting worse--soon i will be obsolete. for a moment, imagine life a century from now. Do you think of people tanning at the beach or taking a hike to pick wild flowers? No. You think of faster cars (to get you to work quicker), space travel (perhaps to take advantage of untapped natural resources), and ______ (word splotched out b/c of watermark) of weaponry (to kill your own kind). Where is the time to both figuratively and literally, stop and smell the roses?"
this was not a foreign thought to deva. she frequently felt regret when she had to interrupt her daily daydreaming to address her royal responsibilities.
"Deva, you have been chosen to put an end to the plague of unnecessary responsibility. you must go into The City and rekindle the lazy sunday by destroying my arch-nemesis---The Internet."
Deva gasped. although she was delighted by the thought of a NeoRelaxation movement, The Internet was an important part of her time wasting regiment.
What a paradox she has to face.

Magic Hat Bottle Caps

*Life is better barefoot

*Make your Move to Improve your Groove

Feed the Nation with Imagination

*Eyes? check.
Ears? check.
Mind? check...

The Truth is Slippery, like Eels

What is the Cost of the Things you have Lost?

Keep the Pace, go to Space

Don't Strain your Brain in times of Pain

Beer for Peace

Blow off all the Show offs

*You Can't Be Real unless You Feel

Your message in a bottle...cap

History Mystery: Prohibition

*We all have the Power to Blossom & Flower

& my personal favorite:

*If Jerry were here, we'd Buy him a Beer

oh boy

got back from my two week vacation in berlin a couple of days ago. it was the most amazing time with eli in such a wonderful city and i wish i was still there but i have too many other things going on to wax about it. definitely though, the best vacation/experience i've had to date. i'll hold in my heart forever how much it meant to me, so i'm not going to bother writing about it here. i'm moving to utah next tuesday. pretty crazy. thusly, my mom is having me clean out my room here at home, which i dont even use anymore but has so many memories as well as trash. i need to sort through Everything--clothes, movies, books, furniture, memoribilia, school work, notebooks, everything i've ever held on to--decide whether to trash it, keep it, what not. long long process and i dont even know where to begin. so i'm beginning with probably what i should be doing last and i'm going to start posting a lot of stuff here just so i can throw away the hardcopy but maintain the memory. first and foremost: i have a collection of magic hat bottle caps, i keep the ones with the good sayings. so i'm going to post the sayings so i can throw out the fucking bottle caps (or give them to liz).

so i was drunk and given some x so i took it without thinking, sucked on it for about a minute, then spit it and put it in my pocket when i realized i have work at 930 in the morning. still, after merely a minute, im up and in no shape for sleeping Any Time Soon and in good shape for reflection as i am by myself; the only one up at this hour. i Stumbled upon some nuggets of native american wisdom and that got my mind rolling because it was all so true. right now, im thinking about this native american traditional poem that's hanging on the wall at my home home, by my dad's ashes.

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there. I did not die.

i think this poem explains a lot about why my dad wished to be cremated instead of buried (thus why it's hanging right next to him), but i suppose we should've scattered his ashes to really let his soul spread. i hope we're not selfishly holding his essence captive in a meaningless urn. i think my mom still needs him around though. i know that he knows how often i think about him and how much i miss him and how i wish he could've been around to shape my future and my sisters' futures but i guess he has been there all along, just not in the form that is so tangible. lately, thinking about dad always leads to thoughts of eli because both are the most important men in my life, both are always present in my mind, and both are out of reach. it's so good to know how much my mom appreciates the good vibrations that emanate from eli because it confirms that dad would have loved him too.

oh baby i love ecstasy. good good good good vibrations. i don't know where but he sends me there!!!!!!! elij, if you're reading this... :-D

-Stella Blue

p.s. 3 updates in one day! overrrrload.

Possible Paths

Haven't updated in awhile. I've been using other media to write lately. I've decided to take an extended indiscernible amount of time off from school commencing at the end of this spring semester. Instead, I'll (hopefully hopefully) be working some position at Best Friends in Kanab, Utah, living with Jas and/or Kelly. Due to the unstable economy, this glorious non-profit organization is naturally suffering and I don't know if they're hiring for the position I want anymore. I'd take a position as a tour guide though, because Jas says that's potentially available and that would be fucking awesome. If shit doesn't work out for me in Utah, I'll be a little disoriented for awhile because I've been really counting on this Best Friends job. Maybe some time at home, working somewhere, and seeing how life would be living with Mom and the Buffster again. I don't know where I'd work at home though, especially without a car (R.I.P Jethro..), and no money or interest in buying another one. I could always go back to the movie theatre (NO.) or find somewhereeeeeeee to work. Don't know if I could handle Mom in such close vicinity also. Ideally, I would love to move to West Philly and live somewhere for really cheap, get a decent paying job that I don't have to worry about, and explore life as an artist in a thriving city; with Eli & Kate & Liz. Although, that would be more feasible if I worked at Best Friends first for 4-6 months and saved up some money there, so I could enter Philly with some savings while looking for a jobbb. I probably should've warned readers that this entry is probably pretty dry, as it's more me writing to myself rather than to an audience. Enough of the Far Future.

In the Near Future (tonight), I'll be going to see The Future Kids at the Court Tavern! First, before Jenny gets here, I'm going to go pick up my paycheck. So....I'm gonna go do that. Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.........
-Stella Blue.

"The Art of Interruption--'His Girl Friday'"

Howard Hawk’s 1940 film adaptation, His Girl Friday, is a remarkable example of gender relations in film. Its rapid fire banter between the sexes, along with its more or less equal division of male and female lead roles, and its depiction of a female lead as less of a one dimensional ‘love interest’ and more as a complex, vibrant, multi-dimensional character, all lend to the screwball comedy genre it represents. Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are Walter and Hildy, two equally conniving yet charismatic characters that are the driving force of this comedy. Hawks’ comedic vision is to create humor out of putting two fast-talkers into complicated situations and letting the audience watch them talk their way either out of a tough spot or into a good one. However, the film is not as concerned with the situations themselves as it is with the dynamics between Hildy and Walter. Hawks uses multiple methods to ensure that the focus of the film is on the relations between Hildy and Walter. The scene beginning with Walter’s introduction, in his office, as Hildy lets herself in, and ending with both leaving the office amiably after a revealing confrontation (also known as the second scene in the film) contains the DNA of Hawks’ comedic vision.
Formally, this film is a straightforward narrative with no flashbacks, twists, or provocative editing. The mise-en-scene (excluding the characters’ movement) is sufficient in creating a believable newspaper office but does not play much of a role in itself. The camera more or less stays in the same position throughout the scene, panning from space to space, and does not take any technical risks but adheres to Classical Hollywood conventions like medium shots/medium close-ups, 3-point/high-key lighting, and the continuity editing system. However, this is not because Hawks is incapable of provocative art. He chose to subdue the mise-en-scene to emphasize the importance of the dialogue and the chemistry between Hildy and Walter. Their exchanges are masterfully written and executed but they do talk quite fast. Another effort in maintaining focus on the lead subjects is the lack of non-diegetic sound. There is no soundtrack or score, only a clear reception of the fervid tête-à-tête taking place in the office and the dim din of the bustling employees in the background—which Hawks chose to include in the depth of field to realistically simulate the constant activity found at a newspapers’ headquarters. The busy background in conjunction with the rapid-fire style of dialogue and Walter and Hildy’s own constantly-in-motion mannerisms all combine to create this chaotic, oft confusing, absurd, but mostly funny atmosphere that permeates through to the end of the film. As the core of the film relies on conversation (or argument, rather), Hawks does create many eyeline matches and shot/reverse shots that flow seamlessly with the dialogue.
Previously, the ‘characters gestures’ were excluded from the purposefully lackluster mise-en-scene description because their gestures, from the obvious constant cigarette smoking to the less obvious fond eye-roll, play an important role in providing inferences about Hildy and Walter’s past, present, and future relationship together and also about their own individual personalities. When Hildy first enters Walter’s office, adding a knock as an afterthought after she already entered, she introduces herself as the ‘ex-wife’ with a nonchalant confidence that immediately sets bells off in the audiences’ heads—the strong-willed, sassy, female ‘screwball’! Without missing a beat, Walter is introduced as the morally ambiguous yet dashing (as how can any character Cary Grant play not be dashing?) newspaperman that is too preoccupied with his work, i.e. getting a shave in the office, barking orders at Duffy to change the Morning Posts’ political bias in favor of being the first paper with ‘the story’. Throughout the scene, Hildy and Walter combine scathing insults that are more endearing than insulting (as they are delivered with sly grins and knowing smiles that intonate this is an old game for them; almost like inside jokes but keenly executed in a way that lets the audience in on them) with body language that speaks of an old intimacy (both are comfortable with such close proximities as sitting shoulder to shoulder on a desk while bitterly reminiscing about their failed honeymoon) and a continual pacing around the office, needlessly fiddling—Hildy reapplies lipstick, Walter fixes his tie, they smoke another cigarette, Hildy moves to occupy another space, checks the mirror, Walter follows, etc.; this is possibly the only implication that after four months they are nervous to be around each other/see each other but is more realistically a form of habit from careers spent waiting around for something exciting to happen. Perhaps it is a combination of both. In any event, all the facets of their interaction blend together to create this captivating routine. If this film were a dance it would be a fusion of the quickstep and the tango (author’s note: quango!). Regardless, Walter and Hildy utilize the office space in a much more meaningful way than just flowing aesthetics.
After multiple viewings of this scene, Hawks vision runs deeper than a man and a woman that attract conflict and tend to interrupt each other. In fact, this scene is not a happy quango. The entire scene is Walter and Hildy vying for control of space, thus control of the situation, thus control of the other. Hildy enters, calm, collected, and ready to be in control of the space despite it being Walter’s office. She is this way because she knows she has to be around the likes of Walter, who sniffs out peoples’ uncertainties and manipulates the situations into his favor, and also because she has some heavy bombs (engagement, early retirement, decision to explore a normal life) to drop on him that she is sure will waver his assumed superiority. Walter, on the other hand, competes for control because they are on his turf and, as a newspaper editor, he is used to easily engineering social interaction to his advantage. How they bring these goals to the screen without explicitly saying all this is Hawks’ direction—overlapping lines, cutting each other off, speaking louder than the other, trying to get one another to lose their cool (which Walter achieves a few times, notably when he claims he was ‘tight’ when he proposed and if she ‘had been a gentleman’ by not mentioning it the next morning, they would not have been married where in response, Hildy chucks her bag at him and he insults her further by saying she has bad aim), forcing the other to face them, and touching each other in commanding styles. Walter seems to be the winner for most of the unaddressed battles most likely because he has a motive—a goal—to be in control for, whereas Hildy just has information to slowly reveal. Walter’s motive is to either (or both) convince Hildy to stay at the newspaper and re-marry him.
However, Hildy may not be as good-intentioned as she appears. They are both “newspapermen” after all. Upon first encounter with Walter and Hildy, with their childlike one-upmanship and squabbles, one may think Hildy is making the correct choice in wanting to marry Bruce and retire from this business, that they are not good for each other. And yet, there is some truth (perhaps the only truth spoken from any-means-necessary Walter Burns) when he pleads, “We’ve got something between us nothing can change”. Hildy and Walter have more similarities than differences; it is only Hildy’s demand to live a normal life with a respectable husband that keeps them from being together. Hildy wants to go someplace “where she can be a woman,” with boring Bruce Baldwin but she does not act like a woman even as she is saying it, and whenever she talks about Bruce to Walter, the vibe that she emits is one of pure fantasy, a vague smile and a dreamy look in her eyes; a too-good-to-be-true countenance for a former pressroom journalist. Bruce Baldwin also happens to conveniently be Walter Burns’ antonym and she does not hold back from telling him so. Hildy is visibly most comfortable and excited when she is in the pressroom, playing poker and smoking cigarettes with the fellas, with her hat tipped back and tongue extra sharp, the only thing separating the guys from her is a pair of heels. Perhaps I am reading too deeply into a screwball comedy, but I have an inkling that Hildy is just as mischievous as Walter and she has been stringing the oblivious Baldwin along to help her scheme pan out—to make Walter jealous and change his ways when he sees how serious she is about Bruce and the retirement; the ‘scare’ of losing her to Bruce would straighten him out and perhaps get him to treat her decently. Another observation that supports this theory is the fact that Hildy ever even went to visit Walter, as she knows his personality and if she ever had the intention of retiring to Albany with Bruce she would have done so without contacting Walter. Near the end of the movie, she and Walter make a charmingly moral-less team while she does not seem to mind that Bruce is gone and has a terribly phony sob-fest in a last ditch effort to get Walter to treat her right (although she pays no mind to treating Bruce like last week’s dinner).
Regardless of that rather wordy interlude, the scene contains the DNA of Hawks’ vision because despite the rather dark content of the plot (murder, suicide, political corruption, execution, jaded view of humanity), the story is of two former lovers overcoming their differences by working together and both ultimately achieving their goal. This one scene encompasses what the legacy of Howard Hawk’s His Girl Friday is—quick thinking, fast-talking witty repartee between Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. One can view it as superficially as that, admire it for its timelessness or humor, or analyze it until one comes up with inane conspiracies about the moral fiber of a fictional female lead.

-Stella Blue, 3/2009, A-!

Bittasweet

"I dedicate this record, "The Carnival" to all you brothers takin' long
trips down south
Virginia, Baltimore, all around the world
and your girl gets this message that you ain't comin' back.
She's sittin' back in her room, the lights are off, she's cryin'
And then my voice comes in
POW!, in the middle of the night, and this is what I told her for you..."

Milk

just came back from seeing Milk with my sister. james franco was fantastic. i love watching the development of his career. i didnt like diego lunas character, he wasn't really developed well in a film full of wonderfully developed characters. this movie will stay with me-- it really captured the force of san francisco.

haven't been writing much, too much shit going on to pause and reflect upon. four days into 2009....already a crazy fucking year. i turned 21 though, guess i can go out to bars.

dunno.

stoned ponderings on my way to and from the usual bodega where i buy my camels.u

i have an idea formulating in my head about a documentary type movie/short that i want to create. so far, i dont think i want any real dialogue, maybe just a soundtrack that evokes the feelings i would want the audience to experience in juxtaposition with the imagery. i want it to portray the mindset of a cigarette smoker, why they smoke, the duality of the desire and repulsion/the love and hate a smoker feels every time they inhale or buy a pack....i dunno, just an idea so far. i don't even have a camera.

for the hell of it

The Place of Rhetoric in Italian Film

Rhetoric is the act of catering to an audience by evoking emotion and utlizing logic to persuade them to see things in the light of the speaker, or in this case the director. Benito Mussolini was a huge fan of rhetoric, using propaganda to sway the Italian masses to see and do things his way. Because Mussolini and Fascist Italy were so involved in rhetoric, naturally anti-fascists, such as Neorealist filmmakers, were interested in antirhetoric. In Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Millicent Marcus argues that exact point, pertaining particularly to Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, Open City. The idea of Italian films being antirhetorical will be discussed through the analysis of Vittorio DiSica’s Ladri di biciclette. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria will be analyzed to provide the counterargument (Italian films as rhetoric). Federico Fellini’s divergence from rhetoric, anti- or otherwise, will be discussed using La Strada as an example.
Marcus maintains that Rome, Open City is antirhetorical both in style and story. Rossellini’s masterpiece is technically speaking, rather minimalist. He rejected conventional cinema (Fascist approved propaganda) and instead conjured his own voice through the means available to him (the gritty newsreel quality of the filmstock, location shooting, outdated equipment), thus intrinsically creating the antirhetoric. His storyline is more a dramatic chronicling of events rather than an escapist narrative like the white telephone comedies of the same era. He depicts the facts and the hard truths that were being ignored in an up front, take-it-for-what-it-is way, unlike the obvious manipulative rhetoric in Mussolini’s propaganda films. He was not purposely trying to change people’s minds or even raise awareness in a plea for help; he merely saw a skewed aesthetic in the hope of the marginalized people and thought that ought to be chronicled in the only way he knew how—cinema.
However, Marcus’s use of the term “antirhetoric” is a misnomer. Rhetoric is effectively using (cinematic) language to convey a message in hopes of changing the audiences’ mind. Given the definition of rhetoric, antirhetoric suggests that there is no message being conveyed at all. This is not the case with Italian Neorealist films. A true antirhetorical film would be, perhaps, a Rita Hayworth film. Marcus’ antirhetorical films could more appropriately be labeled as anti-Mussolini’s rhetoric, anti-convention, or even rhetorical with a leftist persuasion. Instead of the “empty bombast” (Marcus, p. 34) elicited in Mussolini’s rhetoric, Italian Neorealist directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Michelangelo Antonioni created a new type of cinematic language; a fusion of their prose and their technical styles to make accessible art with interpretive complexities.
Ladri di biciclette is one of De Sica and Zavattini’s masterpieces. It expands Rossellini’s idea of Neorealism by maintaining social issues of Post-WWII Italy and at the same time focusing on a micro-level (a personal journey for one man and his son) rather than a chronicling of historical events. By 1948, when Ladri di biciclette was released, the Neorealist motif had shifted from the Resistance to the insipid daily lives of the proletariat during post-war restoration. Ladri di biciclette is a simple story of a desperately determined man combing the streets of Rome in a futile attempt to find his stolen bicycle so he can provide for his family. De Sica stretches this simplistic plot into ninety-three minutes of beautifully touching “neorealist superspectacle.” (p. 56) Like Rossellini, De Sica tediously shot and edited his film to create an illusion of effortlessness but unlike Rossellini, De Sica had a generous budget to aid his vision of self-concealing artistry. De Sica’s rhetoric about cinematic conventions comes into play here; despite his million lire budget and huge cast, his distaste for commercial films can be plainly seen in the irony of the main character’s, Antonio Ricci’s, bicycle being stolen in front of a movie theatre as he pastes a poster of Rita Hayworth as Gilda on the wall and a sly reference from a driver noting how he does not even want to go see a movie even though it is raining. De Sica’s ultimate purpose for Ladri di biciclette, disregarding his personal contempt for commercial films, was to take a commonplace situation (something that could have easily happened to any one member of his audience) and portray it in a heart wrenchingly dramatic yet simplistic fashion so as to plainly reveal the everyday injustices committed against the sub-marginalized populace. The quintessential example of how De Sica rends neorealist simplicity to capture his audiences’ emotions is the mere one line uttered by the police officer after a journalist asks for any news to report on—“No, nothing, just a bicycle”. The audience knows that this is not just a bicycle; it is a man’s life, and the lives of his family. And the audience can relate to Ricci because the audience is Ricci, but the audience is also the police officer, the thief, and all the other nameless faces roaming around Rome with distant dreams of a better life. That sentiment is what one feels after Ladri di biciclette is over, that sentiment is exactly what De Sica wanted from his audience, and that sentiment is why this film is “antirhetorical”, or rather rhetorical through the lens of a leftist.
Before Neorealism, there was the cinematic movement that prompted the birth of it. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema (1908-1914) predated even Mussolini’s reign of Fascism. In the first Golden Age, however, lie the roots of Mussolini’s propagandistic films. The first Golden Age of Italian Cinema included films like The Last Days of Pompeii, The Fall of Troy, Assunta Spina, and most notably, Cabiria; they were films experimenting with the idea of film as an artistic medium. They were mostly loose adaptations of plays or epic battles and contained much spectacle but they all had the underlying theme of Italian Unification. Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria is the perfect example of a spectacular epic that had little to do with plot, lots to do with visual stimulation, and left the audience with a feeling of happy Italian identity. Cinema was still new and had not yet developed into the 7th art form that it is accepted as today; people still mainly wanted to see things they had never seen before—the exotic. However, directors quickly understood the potential properties of film that make people feel differently or think differently. Cabiria enmeshes the idea of the unseen exotic and the idea of using film to invoke emotion from the audience together to create a spectacular metaphor. Pastrone’s Cabiria uses awesome shots of volcanic eruption, laughably exaggerated acting, enormous and intricate set designs, decadently poetic intertitles, voluptuous, silk-laden, hyper-feminine women, and oily, loincloth-laden, hyper-masculine men to create an exotic spectacular. Cabiria is the title character and Sofonisba is her foil. Cabiria represents Rome and Sofonsiba represents Carthage. Cabiria’s drama parallels the Third Punic War; Sofonsiba’s highly stylized, dramatic, and drawn out death scene symbolizes the death of Carthage—or more importantly, the victory of Rome. The character of Maciste, the devoted servant and exotic “other”, symbolizes the unerring loyalty of Numidia to Rome during the Third Punic War. Cabiria is a political allegory that was released with the intent to create a sense of pride for Italians. Thus, Cabiria can be seen as the beginning of rhetorical film.
Federico Fellini represents both the decline of Neorealism and the rise of Auteur Cinema. His La Strada has many aspects that could cause one to label it as a Neorealist film, but Fellini was more interested in an entirely new form of cinema, one that indeed portrayed impoverished characters in a bleak environment but strayed from “traditional” Neorealism in that its main concern was Fellini’s personal artistic expression. Film theorist Andre Bazin calls La Strada “neorealism of the person”, meaning it examines human problems apart from historical or societal contexts. (p. 146) Thus, La Strada has no political rhetoric or antirhetoric. Fellini was tired of the genre and wanted to create his own genre—films that when watched, one would recognize it not as a western or musical or Neorealistic, but as a Fellini film. His characters, like Gelsomina, Zampano, and The Fool, do not represent a socioeconomic class but are individuals with depth that the audience can grow to care for in a different way than they cared for Pina or Don Pietro from Rome, Open City. When Don Pietro dies, it is a symbolic death that inspires hope in the audience. When Gelsomina dies, the audience watches as Zampano has a personal epiphany. It is the same difference as reading Shakespeare’s historical drama Henry V1 or reading Shakespeare’s fictional comedy Much Ado About Nothing. This analogy represents the core of Auteur Theory, where the filmmaker becomes the author and the camera becomes the pen.
Rhetoric is a concept that is hard to avoid. It can be used to persuade the audience to do whatever the speaker (or director) suggests. From the very birth of the cinematic medium, films like Pastrone’s Cabiria were being made to conjure emotion from the audience in hopes of changing the audiences’ perspective. Mussolini used propagandistic rhetorical films to unite Italy over Fascism. Neorealist directors, like Rossellini and De Sica, made films that overtly opposed the Fascist Party by depicting a desolate Post-War Italy and the tribulations of the people that have to live there. Although Neorealist directors opposed the Fascists’ use of rhetoric, they used it themselves through a leftists’ point of view. Fellini heralded the decline of Neorealism and the purposeful eschewing of rhetoric in favor of the artistic expression that Auteur Cinema had to offer.

just in case my e-mail didn't work

A Brief Comparison
Douglas Sirk’s 1955 melodrama All That Heaven Allows and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1974 take of the melodrama Ali: Fear Eats the Soul are two drastically stylistically opposite yet kindred films. They both ultimately deal with two people who love each other but cannot utilize that love to overcome societal conventions. Rather, the women involved cannot fully surrender to love; the men seem to have pretty solid ideals. Both directors manipulate the cinematic medium to convey very strong stances. Sirk disguises his rhetoric with accessible emotion; Fassbinder slaps you in the face with his rhetoric using Brechtian techniques. Essentially, they are the same film, dealing with (mostly) the same issues but one is Hollywood at its finest and the other is anti-Hollywood.
Yet, Sirk’s film is not entirely Hollywood. It is superficially Hollywood and surely made a pretty penny because of that, but one may argue that it could be parodying the mother that birthed it. In any event, Sirk most certainly knew who his audience would be—scopophiliatic Americans; people who are, ironically, blinded by the pleasure of looking. However, he does attempt to educate the masses. One can almost laugh at his use of clichés (i.e. deer =nature, mink coat=success) to hammer in his rhetoric to a blissfully oblivious populace. And what is his rhetoric? All That Heaven Allows is a fiction depicting/critiquing (depending on who is watching) the realities of 1950’s American petit-bourgeois society—the downward spiral of womanhood after they are married off to Suitor #1 (or #2, or #3…), the boredom that births the pitting of woman against woman (i.e. the gossip chain), the utter rut one experiences when they allow themselves to be played by the game of life instead of being an active player. Sirk depicts this maddeningly to a tee. But he offers an alternative in Ron, played by Rock Hudson. The idea of Ron is the counterargument to the “ideological safety valve” that some view All That Heaven Allows as. To the ignorant this film can be seen as a portrayal of society without challenging it but it is not. Sirk was trying to make clear that Ron’s way of life is right and Carrie’s way of life is awful. Ron’s Tao is explicitly revealed in the Shakespeare reference (“To thine own self be true”) and the Thoreau excerpt Carrie reads. Carrie’s Tao is revealed when her children buy her a television for Christmas. Thank divinity that Carrie chose Ron at the end. From a feminists’ viewpoint, it is a pity that Ron’s character had to be the man and Carrie’s character had to be the woman but Sirk was trying to make a profit and that character-sex-swap might have been a little too before its time.
Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was made in the 70’s (twenty years after) and in a different country than Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows, thusly it was made unabashedly and without the façade Sirk constructs to appeal to an audience. Fassbinder assumes his audience is willing to participate in thinking rather than using the cinema as means for an escape or as means to identify. In his assumption, he adopts Bertold Brecht’s theory of distanciation to separate the raw emotion from the raw facts of life. Firstly, his purposeful use of ugly actors achieves the audience in noticing the absence of beautiful people, which is a step in the right direction for the audience noticing something. Secondly, he uses extreme tableaux to prevent the audience from getting too wrapped up in plot and also to provide a moment of reflection upon what may have just occurred (and what it might mean) and appreciation for his stark aesthetic. In terms of plot, Fassbinder’s film is different than Sirk’s in that his is less concerned with the elite versus the enlightened and more concerned with race and economic issues. Emmi is but a cleaning lady, but Ali is a Moroccan migrant worker, the lowest of the low. Also, in All That Heaven Allows, the character of Ron is very sure of himself and his ideals but all that Ali is sure of is that he wants cous cous. Both Ron and Ali share the dislike in being objectified (both seem rather disinterested in their respective partner’s want to “show them off”) but at least men are being objectified for once.

we share the same stardust, baby.

as well & good as floating around on a cloud with eli is, 2009 is creeping up on us. i want to keep floating though. alas, alas....

he confronted me yesterday about it. good thing too cause i was doing my best at keeping it aht ah mi head.

he's going to berlin. and i...am staying this side of the atlantic. [& if i had any notion of how to drive my car across the atlantic ocean i'd be fucking set]

he did most of the talking, i was too stoned and startled to say much. no, i think i was just too afraid. same old song & dance with eli as was with Xam. it went too far without much talking thus getting to the point where i was too afraid of....i don't even know what i'm afraid of. loving completely? loving at all? getting hurt? sadness...

FUCK.




fuck.


i don't know how to feel or how to act or what to say. i just want to be with you.

i've just wrote & deleted like 20 sentences.

fuck.

i don't want this to end yet. why does it have to be now? i want to get as much as i can out of you before you leave. i'll be ok once you're in germany but i can't have you this close to me and not be able to have you. but if we continue with this, will it just be harder later? i want you to have as much fun as possible in germany; meet interesting people, make love to beautiful blonde women, be able to tap fully into you're creativity, go your own way....i want you to do everything that made you want to go to germany in the first place and i don't want to be a weight on your back. i cannot be any more sincere. i'm not saying this so you can feel less guilty. i don't want you to feel guilty at all. you're free!

but it just sucks because we have a beautiful thing. i suppose our timing was off. i haven't got enough of you yet. and my feelings for you are so pure and real that i'm scared of them. i haven't felt as comfortable or kindred with any one single other person than i have with you. & i know that scares you. & it scares me too. i'm usually so detached. i love from a distance. but the only distance between us is the necessary breath we must take as we kiss.

after saying all this, i still don't have any resolve.

all i's got is one big sigh. & there's still so much to be communicated.

-stella's blue. :-(

but god put a song on my palm that you can't readdddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd

lalalallala im at The Core right now doin' a radio show with ms. lennox and ive gone all silly

nothing to say, just nothing else to do until the next dj shows up, she's late!!

i havent brushed my teeth today. don't you hate that grimy feeling? grimy. grimy grime.

slept till 3 today. lazed around. chilled on the radio. blahhhhhhhhh

oh silliness.

it was a pastoral scene. no mountain goats, just cows.
what the hell is this song?
feel free to listen to this nutso bluegrass jawn at http://thecore.fm

ok other djs here, gotta gooooo

peace children,
stella blew.

PURE ECSTASY

i just read through all of these entries and a lot of things have changed. firstly, Xam is totally out of my life which should be really weird, but is actually not. When i got back from Utah, i had one really hectic week of running errands and getting ready for school and chillin' with Catie before she went off to Boston, and then i went back to Rutgers. I saw Xam once between those times, while trippin on some lucy in the middle of the Pine Barrens for the Jersey Devil Fest. It was the first time we saw each other/spoke since before Utah and he had brought a date. I sincerely didn't mind. I guess our "relationship" was out of convenience and a mutual need to fuck and all of my inner-insanity about it was fabricated out of boredom and the rut one gets stuck in while they're home for summer. since being back at rutgers this year, he lives inconveniantly far and i'm way too busy with other things and we just...stopped. but not even just him, i hardly see russell or napalm or ben either. they're just not in the cards for this semester. i am so fine with that. i have way too many more important things to write about!

more important thing numero uno: i had my first Dead experience. oh my god. that insanity that i thought was creeping up on me for the past six months? gone. everything explained in one simple (but so not simple) grateful dead show. i went to see Phil Lesh with Knief at the Nokia Theatre on November 6, 2008 and my life changed. even more extremely than when i got back from Utah. FIRST, i was rolling hardcore on molly. best drug ever. even better than acid? i dunno, i'd have to take acid at a Dead show to really make that comparison. I totally understand the idea of the Deadhead now. I had an inkling of what was really going on (until now), and Knief knew that and he's been guiding me to my revelation for awhile now. Knief and I have had our differences but we've always come together over the Grateful Dead. We both get it. He GOT it, i only got it but now i GET it. DISCLAIMER: this might not make sense to you if you're not a deadhead and you might think im truly insane but i guarantee i am more sane than you'll ever ever ever be. Ok, so Phil played that show soley/soul-ly for me. he felt my new, fresh, and sincere energy and he personalized that show for me. but it's not like that. he really played it for everyone but that's whats so great about the dead...ahhh i dont know i really cant explain. i think that's why it's such a secret society. if too many people knew or if it could be explained in one short blog entry, the jig would be up. all i am allowed to say is there is magic in this world, there are alternate dimensions. drugs enhance and speed up the process, but i think the meaning of life is to try to reach this revelation without drugs. and really, that makes total sense. age old. buddha. nirvana. meditation. dr. seuss. siddhartha. basis of religion, really.
so Phil Lesh changed my life and wha t i honestly want to do but don;t know if i have the guts to do it is drop out of school and devote my life to following Phil Lesh & his Friends. Like, i know im not crazy because Knief knows whats up...all those old heads know whats up, they're still representing at the shows for a fucking reason, man. magiccccccccccccccccc. "you were the landmark of the show" {hugs random old head after show that was walking by for 30 seconds}---"keep smiling...you have the perfect smile" "that girl you're with has good karma, keep her that way" the space dancing....the SPACE DANCING, the molly, Golden road to unlimited devotion, turn on your love light (let it shine on me), hugs, EVERYBODY SMILING, everybody dancing, everybody feeling the fucking MUSIC the fucking ENERGY, OBAMAAAAAA, dancing in the streets, kindness of strangers (really family though...my tribe<3), i'd rather be with you, mindfucking, eli, eli, eli, smiling, the BASS, LESH PHIL PLAY, everything making sense......all the literature ive read on the dead, the hours of time i spent listening to their shows was for a reason it makes sense.....everything was perfect nothing bad happened, we were so LUCKY all the time, the knowing grins of the old heads, everybody feeling and knowing it was my first show, the pure ecstacy drug induced and otherwise......i think ive said too much but not enough at all. i think ive said more than im allowed. people that hhave it in them already but just havent learned WILL learn. they need a knief. i'll be their knief. ill guide them but i wont let them in on it. they need to discover the capability of humans for themselves. all they need to know is they'll be happy and never want to stop dancing or giving hugs. and who doesnt want that? if someone doesnt want that, then they dont deserve to know the truth thats out there. knief said that when (not if) i go to gathering of the vibes this summer, he'll let me in on his familys handshake. like, i never understood knief's obsession with me and thats what really turned me off of him but now i know that he saw in me something i knew was there but didnt know what to do about it. "help is on the way" was the first song phil played. oh how he knows. when i was rolling hardcore and reveling in my revelations (everyone has their own path they need to find and follow) there was a lot of mindfuck about how i should feel about knief now that we share such a surreal but REAL connection and....but i know his purpose was fulfilled. he was not meant to be my lover but my companion, my friend, my family. we cant ignore what we both now about the world so we'll always have that ("we'll always have the dead") but i let him know that i'm not interested in.....basically having sex with him. yeah......as fantastic as a person he is, we never had good sexual chemistry, just good cuddling chemistry! anywho, i have someone so better for That, and for so much More.

which brings me to more important thing numero dos: elijah snyder-vidmar. the fate of the hyphenated elite bringing two kind souls together! what a dreamboat! exudes sexuality, but has little moments of awkwardness that serve to make me feel better about myself. :-). sometimes i just wonder how someone so remarkable could be interested in ME? but then i lay off the self-doubt and realize i can be cool sometimes too, maybe lol. my housemates keep asking me if we're dating, and all i can do is smile. i don't date. i don't do boyfriends. i tried to see maybe if i could with Bret but that didnt work out so well. i mean brets obviously still one of my best friends but thats for sure all we'll ever be. i just cant do it. i dont know if its solely that constricting title of "boyfriend & girlfriend" that bugs me....nah i would definitley have pride in being eli's girlfriend. but i really just dont like being in a relationship like that. its so much pressure. when i was with bret, i wasnt living my life anymore, i was living OUR life...like, having to call him to make sure its ok if i go out without him and then he'd want to come and then id feel obligated to hang out around him instead of just dancing and having a good time. thats one major thing i like about eli----we can fucking DANCE. thats real imporant to me. i just have such a good time when i'm with him. i see a lot of myself in him and i think he sees a lot of himself in me. we both have a lot of inner turmoil but at least for me, it disappears when i'm around him. at the Phil show, i spent so long deciding in my head whether to text him or not and in the end, i did and it was the right decision. the crowd didnt seem to think so at first cause i think knief was let down and everybody came down a little but then through smiling and dancing and good energy and good karma that ive been actively building my entire life, by Sugar Magnolia everything was OK again, i emitted my good vibrations about eli to the crowd and they accepted me as the Sugar Magnolia that I (and everybody else at the show) am inside. I texted him "I wish I rolled with You". what i meant was i wish i rolled with him for my first time but i think i left that out subconscisouly on purpose because really i cant imagine a better first time and i certainly couldnt have two first times so i made some choices. they were all right, alright. so the long and the short of it is eli and i have a) really good sex b) really good pillow talk c) really good body language d) really good dancing chemistry e) really good interactivity, like when we do activities like play games or go on adventures or cook together f) really good intentions g) really pretty eyes h) really good taste in music i) lots of things in common j) the list can go on and on but i should probably stop there before i fall in love with him AND myself. what i think we need to work on is: a) serious conversations (fuck that, i hate being serious). b) communicating in general about the future (fuck that too, i live in the NOW) c) studying together (we end up just jumping each other) d) ummm this list is shorter and a lot less valid, to me at least. i wonder what his input will be when i read this entire entry to him. (sidenote: i took a vivance which is why this entry is so long and involved, also because this entry is long overdue....btw i dont usually take pills but i needed to write a paper which i didnt do at all, instead i wrote this which is probably the same length as the paper shouldve been but this is way more prevalent and important to me than a 7 page paper on antirhetorical italian cinema.) so in conlusion (maybe, who knows how much longer i can ramble on for) i feel like giving a relationship a definitive beginning, with the title and the anniversary, is also inherently giving it a definitive end, unless youre planning on getting married (and who does that anymore, they'll end in divorce anyway unless you happen upon you're one and only). and for now, i dont want this phenomenon with eli to end. so i'm just gonna go with it until i dont want to go with it anymore, or until he doesnt want to go with it anymore. i have no plans of meeting anyone else (but who plans that?) and im not seriously attached to anyone in my past so that solves that problem before it could even start. usually my problems lie in brevity....i'm all about the chase and then when i get what i want i dont want it anymore but i still want eli in every way possible (except anally, at the moment...hah.) and i dont have that nasty creeping feeling of claustrophobia or impending doom. i also dont have another problem that usually happens to me where i either like the guy way more than he likes me, or he likes me way more than i like him (which happens more often than not)....i think he and i are on the same page in that respect. if another variable comes in to the equation like, a sexy asian girl (ill explain that theory later), we'll deal with it then. so yeah, just a happy sexy good time until he goes to berlin in january. that's actually really near to now though. i want him to know now that i want him to go. this is my delve into narcissism for the entry: a couple weeks ago, sam asked me in context of a conversation we were having about eli & mys' future, "what if he falls in love with you?" the thought hadnt crossed my mind before, i had assumed i would be the one more into him (just cause hes just got that aura of fucking cooooool, man), but after she said it, i was forced to think about all my past paramours and a lot of them ended with, as i said before, the guy liking me way way more than i like him. i actively try to be humble and maybe thats part of my "fatal kind of charm" (direct Mirah quote), but i have to admit there is a history of men falling in unrequited love with the Black-Regan women: sisters, mother, and Pug included. i'm not too worried about that though because i sure like Eli a heck of a whole lot, i cant imagine him liking me in any creepier way than the writing-a-million-word-long-blog-entry-at-5-in-the-morning-about-him-kind of way. hehe. BUT! he is going to berlin in january (or he should be, depending on a transient professor and an elusive signarture) and he's planning on being there for awhile, and by awhile i mean he has no definitive plans to re-enter the USA any time. And i'll be in Utah for the summer (or i should be depending on a transient car and an elusive economy) so i guess......we'll just see about that future.

:-)

i'm seeing the most beautiful boy. and i'm so happy.

back @ home, but a different one

utah changed my life. it changed everything. now i have direction; a goal. i'm going back to best friends next summer, all summer, & working instead of interning. so i'll be doing the same stuff except getting paid for it. nice.
i don't know if it was all utah, or maybe i'm just growing up but i can feel it in my bones & in my soul-- i'm changing. i don't really know how to illustrate with words all the shit going through my head but...i don't even know! there are so many changes going on in my life right now it's impossible to pinpoint one event. everythings different. i'm living in my own house with all these new people, i just got a job, i care about my school work, im contemplating taking a break from my lifelong pal marijuana, i cant decipher if all the acid makes me better or worse, i keep on thinking im a lesbian, i dont have any intimate distractions right now, i havent had sex in more than 2 months, i NEED to have sex like, this very second, i'm paranoid about people reading my mind, i think i can read minds, intersubjectivity, intersubjectivity, intersubjectivity, the list goes on and on and on.
my main battle, i think, is figuring out if i'm normal or not. and i know i know, what is normal anyway? but i have a lot of thoughts and soemtimes i just want to take comfort in the fact that other people have similarly whacked out thoughts all the time too. i keep on coming to the conclusion that, given my situation, i'm pretty normal. i graduated high school, and now i'm three years into rutgers. i have a job. i have friends. i get by. SO, given those facts, and given all the people who are like me in that respect, maybe i'm not as weird as i think i am, maybe that girl that just walked by the window thinks she can read minds too.

ok i can tell that wouldn't make sense to anyone but me so good thing no one reads this except me.

maybe i'm just breaking free from the societal mold so i have thoughts that run deeper than what happened in last weeks episode of the hills.

i just can't stop thinking and it's really getting on my nerves. sometimes i wish there was a button that just made my mind empty for a lil' bit. but...that's exactly what i'm fighting against. 'the man' is raising troops of mindless drones. i wish everyone knew that. everyone needs to drop some fucking acid. but then they have to deal with the consequences of fucking THINKING ALL THE TIME. it hurts!!


i dunno man....i gotta go think about some shit. lata.

-azul de stella

utah!

so i'm in utah and it's absolutely amazing. working at best friends is the most rewarding experience ever. it's hard manual labor but it's so gratifying knowing what you're doing is literally changing a life, even if it is for a pig or cat or bunny. it's something i'm seriously considering returning to whence finished at ol' rutgers. the best friends' mission is to spread kindness through animals and it really works. it's so hard to explain how this place is making me feel and think unless you've been here; and i encourage everyone to come visit and volunteer and understand the natural wonder of this place. it's so spiritual and just i don't even know, awesome. outside of best friends, i've just been chillin' in kanab-- smallest town ever. there's no social life, there's one traffic light, it's a complete microcosm. all of utah is a microcosm of it's own, completely separate from the rest of the united states. it's crazy that this place is seriously a part of the US-- the thought process is so completely different. first of all, i have not seen one black person here. no where. non-existant. second of all, everyone here marries out of high school and has three kids by the time they're my age! and of course, there are the mormons. yesterday was the mormon holiday 'pioneer day' and they had a parade through town which consisted of a float carrying toddlers that read "future missionaries"...signin' em up young so there's no chance for them to think for themselves, and a pick-up truck full of women in traditional mormon garb (full length skirt and blouse, all skin covered except for their faces and their braided puff of a hair [the higher the puff, the higher their status within their polyg clan]) that had a banner that read "a gracious woman retaineth honor"--vomfest, for ser.

there are 4 other interns aside from myself--three are all around my age and one is an older woman looking to leave her old life and start a second one; quite common around best friends. a lot of people all had previous lives in corporate america and chose to finally do something about their love for animals, planned to work here for a couple years, and ended up staying here for a decade or two. i think that's fucking awesome. anywho, i get along rather well with the other interns. the three that are around my age and i go out to eat often, sit together at lunch, go to the one movie theatre with it's one screen, exclusively pg-13 and under movies that are already out of the theatre in any other state, and $1.50 extra large popcorn, and the four of us took a drive up to zion and hiked the beautiful emerald pools trail the other day. cool cool experience. honestly though, kanab is the "greatest earth on show", the golden center of national parks (directly in the middle of zion, bryce, and the grand canyon) and one need'nt even make the hour trip to zion to get the same experience as walking down the streets of kanab or the 10 minute drive up angel canyon to best friends.

tuesday starts part 2 of my internship. the first two weeks the interns spent a day or two in each different animal area (dogs, cats, parrots, bunnies, horses, pigs, & wild friends) then the last four weeks we choose which area we want to focus in. i chose doggies, exclusively the runs behind the clinic with the "red collar dogs" as opposed to Dogtown Heights with the "green collar dogs". every dog at best friends is ranked by the color of their collar. green means their volunteer friendly, they can go on walks with anyone, etc. the red collar dogs are staff only-- they have a bite history, are dog aggressive, have issues in general. purple collar dogs i think are "caution" dogs, maybe a bite history from a long time ago or not good with kids, afraid of men, etc. i can't even remember the other color collar. color collar. color collar. anywho so i have an affinity with the more difficult dogs. we get to pick a dog for a "one-on-one" experience. basically, we choose a dog (or the dog chooses us) that has an issue, like is shy or jumps, or just something that needs to be worked on and we get to know it for four weeks and personally try to help the dog overcome it's issue. should be pretty fun.

this morning jas and i went to church. ugh. jas has a way of guilting people in to doing things and i felt bad when i said that i didn't want to go. so i went and my cheek twitched guiltily the entire time i was sitting there listening to the catholic bullshit--it was like my body telling me i shouldn't be there. i'm a spiritual person, or at least i try to be but spiritual is the key word there. i am not religious. i don't believe in organized religion....especially catholicism--i should know, i was raised on it. eight years of CCD and i'm fucking through. i do believe that at least one day a week should be a day of rest and reflection but back in jersey, my church is waking up at Xam's on sunday morning, smokin a doober, going to brunch at zinc cafe with my friends, and zenning it up with a good hack circle to work off the 'itis after a sick meal made by chris at zinc.
speaking of friends, i miss everyone dearly. it's only been two weeks since i left but time goes by so slowly here it feels like i haven't seen anyone in years. unfortunately, there is a serious dick drought here. everyone's married already and the like, so i often think of Xam. i wonder what it'll be like when i come home. the lack of funny good looking available guys is reaaaaaaaaally frustrating, especially for me and my love of romping so i lie awake at night relieving myself, hanging on to seemingly distant (uuh three weeks ago?) memories of Xam & I. gahh he's so cute.

also speaking of friends, she she, ninja elf, rasputin, and cait are leaving for their three week road trip (final destination-- kanb, utah to visit me!) tomorrow night. i'm so excited to see them but im actually really jealous that i don't get to go on the road trip :-( it's gonna be so much fun for them. cay cay's in san fran right now visiting fink for a couple days, that's really sweet. i'm glad she got to go out there.

well i think that's more or less all the news i have. i'll be back in jersey on dad's birthday, aug. 24th. i hope he looks over me and makes sure i have safe travels. i was actually wondering why jas started going to church out here, i know she's not super catholic either. i figured out that's it's most likely a thing we used to do when dad was here and she's keeping it alive. i was four when he died but i always forget that jas was 14; she had 14 years of life and memories with him and i can only imagine that how ever much i miss him, she missed him 14x more. i think it might be why i conceded and went to church today, and also why i make the yearly trip over to St. Joan's every Christmas. going to church is one of the few things i remember doing with him. my mom and dad weren't religious either but they thought that us kids should be raised with some form of spirituality and then we were free at 13 to choose if we wanted to follow catholicism or follow some other religious or non-religious route. anyway, without fail every Christmas Mass i sit there ignoring the sermon and just think of how different our lives would be if he was still alive, and i always end up crying. i'm not a big cryer but sitting there in church, with the holiday spirit flying around, and the familar sights and smells, thinking of what my dad would think of the boy i'm currently seeing, or if he would be ok with all the decisions i'm making, or how different my decisions would be if he didn't die....the tears just spill. ahh alright, this entry is getting way too long and waaaaaaay too sappy. and i have to pee like a motherfucker so ima go.

peace & love.
-stella blue.