Old fashioned homemade music(and John Lurie)

I should've asked these guys their names – or at least bought their CD – while I had the chance. They were playing out in front of our local art house theater a few weeks ago as a sort of opening act for the Yard Dogs Road Show, which I attended with some friends and which brought all kinds of interesting out-of-towners crawling out of the woodwork. That was probably my favorite part of the evening, though I enjoyed it all (well, mostly) – seeing new people milling around who were Not carrying a wineglass in one hand and a credit card in the other and asking about everything, "How much?"

Anyway. I like this kind of stuff. Homemade clothes, homegrown food, music you play or sing in person for yourself and your friends. Things that take a long time to put together by hand. I spent several hours on Sunday afternoon sitting on the front porch mending shirts, jeans, dresses with a needle and thread. When I was done I felt like I'd really done something.

In other news, in doing a little online research for a project I wanted to do this month (I had decided that August was going to be John Lurie film festival month at my house), I ran across this page of some of his paintings. Maybe I'm taking on some of the uptight and easily offended sensibilities of my early 20th-century heroines, but I have to admit I was kind of disappointed to see how ... well, how ugly and juvenile and just kind of stupid some of the paintings were ("I am a horse and I want to screw your wife," etc.). I had hoped I would like them. Alas, I do not. Sorry, John Lurie.

I'm still doing the fest, though. Six movies lined up in the Netflix so far, most of which feature the man only in small roles ... which is fine. Did you know he was in Desperately Seeking Susan AND the Last Temptation of Christ? And that my favorite movie that he's in (Stranger Than Paradise) is not available on Netflix at all? Which may be just as well, now that I think of it. I've fallen out of love with Jarmusch lately; haven't liked anything he's done in the last eight or nine years. Maybe I wouldn't even like Stranger Than Paradise anymore.

So yeah, you could say I basically have nothing to report today. Well, I did get offered a little promotion at work. But nothing's really happening for sure yet, so I'm not going to write about it.

I have a branch of jasmine on my desk that I picked off a neighbor's vine yesterday on my way back from the post office. Now that the flowers are dry it's starting to remind me of the smell of lilacs. That's a nice thing to smell on the first day of hot, desperate August: a whiff of spring.