My Adventures In YouTube week of 12/31

This was one of my favorite videos of the year that I'm pretty sure hasn't gotten much play on the ol' MTV. It's from a little artist named Charlotte Hatherley (for her song "Behave")and this video is just a perfect mix of animation, live action, music and theme. Actually, it actually transcends the word of music video to become more of a great short film...

Emotionally Charged Towel #14

To a singleton, there's no worse feeling than sitting down at a restaurant by yourself and having the host quickly pull all of the additional silverware, etc. off of the table before you have a chance to slide your lonesome self into a suddenly cavernous booth. I can almost hear them say "Well, you won't be needing all this will you? I've got a very large party of happily coupled folks that can certainly use these utensils more than you. In fact, I'll seat them right next to you so you can hear and see them nuzzle and laugh together all night. Now can I get you something to drink or did you want to get started on that game of Tetris on your phone before you place your order?".
Sometimes I want to lie and tell them to keep one extra setting around because someone "might" be joining me, but then they would just keep circling around waiting for that imaginary other to appear and thus keep them from processing my order in any quick amount of time. Then when no one eventually came I would become "stood up" chatter for the staff and they would resort to putting little smiley faces on the bill with an extra mint as if to say "No worries, luv. You'll be gangbusters next time and you'll have to fight off additional diners at your table. Now freshen your breath and skulk out the back if you don't mind."
Who's to say that while I dine alone some other solo flyer wouldn't become hypnotized by the sight of me forking lettuce and ranch dressing into my maw and feel a pressing need to forgo all social barriers and invite himself over to join me? Or at least ask me to quiet it down because he can hear me chewing over his tense game of phone Tetris.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 11/22

When I think of the 1990's I automatically think of the video work of David Fincher (director of ALIEN3, SEVEN, FIGHT CLUB, ZODIAC and other moody greats). He brought a style and creativity to music videos that is surely missing today. I've rounded up some of my favorites (sorry, but YouTube won't let me embed George Michael's FREEDOM) of his for you to reaquaint or be introduced. Be sure to check out Madonna's BAD GIRL. That video is particularly stellar.

Paula Abdul: COLD HEARTED SNAKE


Aerosmith: JANIE'S GOT A GUN


Billy Idol: CRADLE OF LOVE


Madonna: BAD GIRL

My Adventures In YouTube week of 10/18

Though only featuring 21 words sung over and over again over a mixed Chaka Khan track, Stardust's "The Music Sounds Better With You" is a song that fails to leave my CD collection. The group (which featured Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk) is simple, steady and surprisingly not annoying for a dance track. Early in his great career Michel Gondry directed the video which reminds me of my own summer days as a kid watching the MTV Top Video Countdown and drawing pictures. Man, I'm getting old.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 10/02

I was reminded the other day about the old TV show SOLID GOLD that used to play when I was growing up. For those unfamiliar a cache of dancers wearing skimpy outfits and nude pantyhose shimmied and shook their own dance routines to that week's Top 10 music hits. It really was something. Pop music and a little skin for the heteros, dance routines and spangles for the homos and all flash flash and jazz hands. This was truly one of those shows that you look at and think "Wow. That really would never work today would it?". Well, Darcel and all you crazy dancers, thanks for the memories.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 9/21

Picture it. Sicily. 1986. A young Keith Garcia (about 9) is hanging out watching HBO. Suddenly a movie starts and right out of the gate a song comes on and Keith is enthralled. The movie: Walter Hill's Streets Of Fire. Why: the Music, the Music, lone wolf Michael Pare, baby-faced Diane Lane belting out rock tunes and sweet cheeked Willam Dafoe. The movie looks and sounds unlike anything I had ever witnessed at the time(and most things I see nowadays). I want everyone to see this little rock fable and pump their fist in the air with joy. Here's the original trailer. Be sure to turn your volume up nice and loud.

Emotionally Charged Towel #13

I've recently likened my luck with men to my luck with playing the powerball. When I lay down my money on a ticket (usually only when the jackpot equals a number that I'm enticed by) I do it on the day of the drawing so that I have a few hours to fantasize about winning the money. I figure out what my lump sum would be and begin spending backwards from there. To be without debt, to see my family and friends content with things I could finally help them out with, to own a house, to actually be able to get my own film projects off the ground, to have some security for the future. Oh, the ways that an ass load of money can make the world go round. I smile for my few hours until the drawing, positive that I actually stand a chance in being awarded a giant novelty check with a whole lotta zeroes on it. Then I check the numbers and I'm not even close to having one of the numbers. Ce la vie. Into the shredder with the ticket and back to fastidiously balancing my checkbook.
When I become interested in someone, be it over the course of months, days, even seconds across a room, I hear the ticket printing out of the machine. I then know it's only a matter of time to the big reveal so I begin filling the slots in my life with the winnings of a rich relationship. Waking up with someone next to me. Sharing a movie with someone who wants to hold my hand. Meeting their friends and family. Being inspired by their own ambitions. Fighting when things wrong. Making up when things go right again. Tasting foods that they've made that no one else can make like them. Adding their playlists to mine. Having someone to scratch my back when I can't reach it. Knowing the intimate details of their touch. Crying because he knows how to get to me. Losing my breath because he knows how to make me laugh. Having a guy to know who wants to know me. There's a lot riding on this type of lottery.
Usually though, the drawing ends up a bust. Either they're straight, they've got more issues than a comic book shop, or something just didn't fit. Ce la vie. I gave it a shot.
I fuss with the love lotto though everyday because I see that the potential payout is greater than any chunk of change could ever be. I know that I'll keep trying because I actually have a shot at a reward that I deserve and so I'll dream of the day that I can accept that giant novelty check with some great guy's name written in the 'dollars' slot and a whole bunch of hearts where the zeroes would have been.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 9/10

Ahh. Camp. Eighties. Really gay.
That's all I need to describe this gem, former soap star Brenda Dickson's personal video homage "Welcome To My Home". What could be better? How about a recent spoof by my new favorite funny ladies at JulieandJackie.com
Why would Ms. Dickson have done such a thing? Lord knows, but I'm glad no one ever questioned her. Original followed by the remake.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 9/1

I love love LOVE cover songs! Even more when the song covered is very obscure like M.I.A.'s decision to cover a song from a 1983 Bollywood film called Disco Dancer. I remember watching that movie when I was a kid on a UHF station we had out here that often played Bollywood films with no subtitles. Oh, M.I.A. you have my heart now. Below is the new version followed by the original:

My Adventures In YouTube week of 8/27

I'll admit. I'm kind of in love with the Angry Nintendo Nerd. Sure...we'd burn fast and hot and then I'd have to wrangle my way out of the relationship due to his 'issues'. I've really got to stop liking guys with more issues than a comic book shop.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 8/20

CHUNGKING EXPRESS. If you've never watched the film, you really should. I'm a firm believer in the idea that if you pay attention, all of life's answers can be found in this one movie.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 8/12

Nothing brings me joy quite like Sparks. The brothers Mael are the perfect mix: 5% weird, 10% haunting, 15% queer and all the rest is just awesome.

My Adventures In YouTube week of 8/6

This video always reminds me of the freewheeling reckless days I always thought were waiting around the corner... but never were.

Strawberry Letter 31

(photo from Matthew Porterfield's HAMILTON)
Dearest,

You've never had the pleasure of doing so but I was recently noticing that my bedroom is a wonderful place to wake up. Perhaps I've always taken it for granted, my mornings are usually a time when I grudgingly awake just to jump in the shower and speed off to work, but just today things caught me by surprise. For starters, the light is just perfect. A five dollar purchase of some thin red curtains has turned the sunlight to honey. You realize that it's morning without having to be blasted awake with a forced recognition. This creates a nice cobble stone pathway from dreams to lucidity that's just long enough to carry a lemon tinged dream or two into reality with you. The walls alongside my bed feature a few posters of Pedro Almodovar films that carry his signature mixed colors and textured lettering, opening your eyes to this kaleidoscope works well with the painting on the back of your eyelids, filled as they are with a map of the cosmos that glows and sparkles with the power of REM. Lately the temperature of the morning has been just right. If you catch a chill the cat will probably wrap your feet in his fur and purr to a slight massage.
Without you here I'm been sleeping diagonally: head North-East, feet South-West. With you I'd be sure to give you pick of your favorite side and latitudinal preference. I imagine that with you on my side waking up every morning would take on an even greater pleasure. I'd welcome the slight change in temperature and scent of your shampoo on the pillowcase. The beating of your heart and the wisps of your breath a lovely mix to the chirps of birds outside who, though they can fly, will never be lucky enough to experience what I would every day. Though I'm sure branches and leaves would feel like cotton candy with you there at eight o'clock every morning.

Strawberry Letter 29

Dearest,

Some amputees deal with an ailment known as "phantom limb". They're so used to living with all of their parts that when one is taken away from them they continue to operate and act as if the piece was never gone, until they try to use the limb and find nothing. It can cause great shock and dispair and often delays the recovery of the patient as they continually have a hard time getting used to the absence over and over again.
I suppose I've been used to you being gone for some time now, that I live each day assuming that you are there with me. I feel just like everyone else and go about my daily tasks. Then I reach for you beside me at night and find nothing were I expected to feel your warm and familiar body. I think I'm over the initial shock of this occurance but hate to think that I'll ever fully recover to the notion of your absence. That I'm different from all of the others that have full use of all their parts, some of whom take it for granted. I could seek out a prosthetic but know that my body would reject something that didn't have you coursing through it. I'll continue to nurse this wound and hope that you're keeping yourself on ice until the time is just right for reattachment.

Love,
Me

Strawberry Letter 27

Hello my love,

I thought about you this weekend on a sky like mushroom soup. I reminded a pair I know that umbrellas work better for two if you link arms. It's the only way that you can keep pace in the rain. I wondered where such a golden nugget of knowledge had come from. I finally settled on the paper pink notion that you had given me that tip long ago as a way of keeping your smile in my thoughts on rainy days. It's like how I keep your favorite drink around for a nip and your brand of smokes hidden in my cupboard. It seems silly but I just want you to know that a vanilla sight comes to mind every time I open a drawer looking for a hammer and see those cigarettes with the cellophane keeping them fresh until you come over, wet like a cat in the drink with no umbrella, and find that in your panic to outrun the heavens you dropped your last two sticks in a quickly racing mini stream. Though we both know you should quit, you really needed one especially after all that is bursting from your head to tell me. And I'll listen with a sweet ear while I turn the heat up just a notch to dry out your shoes by the vent. I'm clueless as to how many cigarettes are in a pack but I look forward to stretching out their lifetime across those days that may seem insignificant as they go by but are expensive to cash in later when they're gone.
I sat through a late show of the film AMELIE wishing that I could turn to you at all the right moments and appreciate that I had found you like the heroine finds her nerdy hero after years of not knowing he was always there. I wish that the theater had invested in those fancy seats where the arms come up so that I could lay in the nook of your arm as our faces flickered romantic reflections like a a slide show spun forward to catastrophic speeds. Your heart sounds like a projector sprocket running and it lulls me to calm. I imagine the film being shown from your gigantic eyes. In Cinemascope, of course.
I continue to look for you in the faces I see everyday and wish that you would hurry up and figure things out already so that I could wind these clocks again. Their blue faces would light up like a lightning bolt caught in gooey molasses and quietly tick away our time together again. Until that day I just continue to tell time by the warm sun and fall asleep in the night when the waiting for you turns me to a million drops of water cascading down to clean the slate and start over anew.

Until the next drop,
Keith

Emotionally Charged Towel #12

Another trip down memory lane, courtesy of 18 year old Keith and some spring cleaning. I think I like this poem more than the last story I put up. Maybe I'm just being a hopeless romantico...

You want to call him PRETTY
But you just know that he'd laugh
At your uncreative choice of adjectives
But there's just no other way to describe him

CUTE doesn't do him justice
He's way past that level of playground good looks
Tether balls and cootie tag spring to mind before his flawless face does

You could call him HANDSOME assuming
That fashion catalog male models wouldn't take offense
At your gall for comparing their stylish Armani tastes
To his penchant for clothes that don't always have to fit him snug

You could easily call him SEXY but
There's just much more to him than that
Though he gives you those thoughts
That shake around your insides

You want to call him PRETTY
But you know he'll laugh again
With visions of poofy hostesses
All dressed to the nines
And tens and twenties too

You'll understand his not understanding
Your need to find a word to explain
All of the ways he makes you feel
When it's just the two of you together
And that PRETTY doesn't quite cut it
So you want to call him PRETTY
And you probably will
But when he's not around
And you keep writing dumb poetry about him
You know you'll want to call him PRETTY
But you should just call him BEAUTIFUL

Emotionally Charged Towel #11

I was looking through some old writings of mine from my younger years and I found this sad little tale. A few months away from my 30th birthday, I couldn't help but remember how I felt when at wrote it at 18, and if I'd changed any since then. Forgive the dramatics it was high school baby...

Once upon a time there was a boy. This boy was the happiest most doggone, whipsmart little boy that ever walked this planet. One day, without expecting to, the boy fell in love. He fell in love so deep that he thought he'd never get out, and he was right. He'd built himself a pit so far into the ground that the strongest ropes in the world couldn't pull him out. So he climbed for months and months until, miraculously, he finally emerged out of the hole he'd been stuck in for so long. When he got out, he ran away, promising never to fall in love ever again. So he kept his eyes cautiously to the ground but he couldn't help looking for love and always falling into places that were way too deep for him. It wasn't that he minded the fall, he just didn't like getting in over his head and perhaps looking was the problem. So he decided to stop looking and just go about his business and maybe, when he wasn't looking, he'd accidentally fall somewhere that he actually fit comfortably in and felt protected.
But everyday he continued to fall, and fall hard, Never quite landing on his feet so that his body felt sore all over. One day he plunged head first into another deep hole and landed with a familiar thud. He didn't know why he had stepped into this hole but it almost felt like he had to. There was almost a safety, a comfort, inside this new place but it went against the boy's better judgement and he tried not to linger too long but couldn't help it. The typical climbs out of all of his previous falls was always tough and harder than he liked. But this fall was different. He didn't feel like he did after getting out of all the other places. He didn't feel alone like he usually did, he felt a steady peace. So instead of heading up the rocky wall towards the light he'd seen so often he merely settled into a corner of this new and inviting space and went right to sleep.

Strawberry Letter 25

Dearest,

I hope this reaches you in time, I have so much to tell you.
I thought I saw you tonight in a sea of bobbing pink heads. The music wafting away swayed the landscape into a unique design. To be honest, I picked up your faint aroma at first. Like the sun burning through an orange grove already a day lost in its own fire, it shocked my senses just in time to calm them. Just when I thought we would be reunited there was a clash of cymbal and a flash of the strings. It wasn't you but one of the many sent here in your place to confuse and strengthen me. It's not fair. I'm tired of flexing this muscle.
I remember your eyes that day that we separated, the iris was an island that I'd have to be lost in a storm to find. Why its been this long I'll never know, or someday I will and that's when you'll come back. Bright as a light and with that protective layer like you never left, I promise never to doubt myself or why you were there. The piece you took is yours. I've never taken my eyes of the piece I took from you. Perhaps I thought I could burn a new you out of it if I just held my gaze. LIke a diamond from the coal you'd be there.
I'm not sure if this will get to you this time but I'll keep trying like I do. Your last note was nice but full of questions that smelled like licorice. I couldn't help but turn them into a list like groceries and keep it with me always. Years we've been apart but this apricot abscence is serving my heart full with fondness.

Take care.
Keith

Emotionally Charged Towel #10

I first laid ears upon The The's song LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH during the end credits of Gregg Araki's film NOWHERE. I was alarmed to find that the soundtrack CD did not contain the song so I had to hunt it down.
Everytime I get cold and feel the sting of snow in my hand this song comes in around the edges. A YouTube of the song is above for added wintertime exposure. Ps- Don't worry, I'm not turning all Goth and Saddoe on y'all. In fact here's a video below to turn your frown upside down again!