Was that Roberto?

The newest DVD featuring Jim Jarmusch's Mystery Train is worth watching not only for the clever film but also for the special features. One of the special features in the Criterion edition of this movie offers an audio-only Q&A with Jarmusch. One of the questions asks if Roberto Benigni is supposed to be in the coffin in one of the film's story lines that features Benigni's real-life wife, Nicoletta Braschi. The story line has Braschi accompanying her dead husband, who's sealed away in a casket, back to Rome. Instead, Braschi is stuck in Memphis (twist on a Bob Dylan lyric??) for a night due to an airline mix up.
"No," replies Jarmusch, but the idea of Roberto Benigni in the casket seemed to amuse the writer/director. Fans of the movie and of Jarmusch will relish the 20-plus Q&As and the other special features. Another is a short taken from the 2001 documentary Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: I Put a Spell on Me. The DVD is worth a few hours of your time, especially if you enjoy rock and roll music, and if you are a Joe Strummer fan, like me.

Craft room closet getting decked out for organization

Getting started on the craft room organization

Craft room

There comes a time when culture vulture crafters like myself have to set up a creative space all their own. What with all the funky old ephemera, and scraps and bits of embellishments that I have accumulated over the past few years, I must put order to the madness. Not to mention the manual paper cutter, the Cricut, the sewing machine, the rubber stamps... The time had arrived!
My supportive husband agreed that the time had come. My hobby was taking over too many corners of our house. He even went with me to the Container Store yesterday to select a few storage items and then helped me drill holes to set them up.
So, today, I am completing this process, except for this very moment. I am blogging, and therefore taking a break from the process of turning my guest room into a craft room that will comfortably accommodate our occasional guests.
I'll try post a picture later today. Wish me luck!

Perfect song

So, I guess I'm getting old, feeling mortal and all. So, occasionally I hear a song or a passage and think, "ah, that's what I want played (read, sung) at my funeral." Perfect Day by Lou Reed is now that the top of the list. Beauty and melancholy. Life as only one day. Gorgeous.

EDIE

Last night I finished reading Edie: An American Biography, by Jean Stein and George Plimpton. This is a book that I purchased two years ago at an estate sale. I'll readily admit I judged by the cover. And under the well-designed, but, OK, rather South Beach-style cover was a beautifully bound book, with a linen-covered spine and the title EDIE embossed across the front cover and highlighted in pastel colors. The back cover was embossed with the Borzoi Books stamp. It looked and felt a treasure more so than intrigued as a story. It was published in 1982 and tells the story of Edie Sedgwick through anecdotes told by people who knew her: family, friends, other Factory denizens. It took a while to get used to the story telling style, and the first few chapters go into great and often boring detail about Edie's family background (rich, blue-blood, socialites, preppies, blah, blah, blah). But, the story took hold, most likely because I've been doing a lot of culture mining in the early 60s, what with all the Mad Men watching, Bob Dylan listening, Andy Warhol documentary viewing. And, tonight, I finally saw the movie Adventureland, probably most famous for being a Kristen Stewart (you, know Twilight) film. The movie has many virtues, and is set in the late 80s not the 60s, but its soundtrack includes songs by The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, and part of a sub plot revolves around talk of Lou Reed. The soundtrack features Pale Blue Eyes, twice. Hearing Lou softly sing "linger on your pale blue eyes" made me cry. Yes, I wept. I cried a little because it reminded me of a sweet friend who once put that song on a compilation tape for me back in college. But, mostly it made me think of Edie, who was virtually thrown away by her fine family and by Andy Warhol. She was a wreck, according to the book. She must have become a bore and a drag, with her drug use and her profligate spending. But, she was smart, generous and, often, fabulous, so say many of the book's quoted contributors. And, she was young and most likely very, very naive as well as mentally ill. The book documents very intimately how wealth and beauty and education and fame mean little when grief and emotional fragility mix with narcotics. You know, the cliche, about judging a book by its cover.

The endangered newspaper, part I

Today's The Dallas Morning News reports that the paper is trying a new strategy to improve its news product while continuing to attract and retain new readers. I wish them luck. I am a subscriber, and I have written my master's degree thesis on the paper's attempt to stay in business.
This is important to you too. Newspapers remain an important source for original reporting, which, among other contributions to society, helps to keep the Web full of credible, topical information. Let's face it, our democracy depends on this. Whether reliable journalism comes from radio, television, bloggers or newspapers, we need this information in order to make informed choices such as who represents us in the school board, the state senate or the White House. Newspapers, for now, continue to be the most active source of this necessary information. But most of us know by now, The News, like most daily newspapers, is struggling to stay in business.
Under these circumstances, what are newspapers to do? Essentially, what The News is attempting to do, which is to fix their business model. The Internet is not killing newspapers, really. Their business model, which has relied heavily on classified advertising, created a weak spot easily infiltrated by free or low-cost Internet advertising such as craigslist and Monster. In 1950, classified advertising was 18 percent of most papers' revenues. In 2000, that number was 40 percent, according to newspaper scholar Philip Meyer. In his book The Vanishing Newspaper, Meyer also points out that advertising in general has taken on a larger part of most newspapers' revenue. In 1950, it made up 71 percent, while in 2000 that number grew to 82 percent.
So, if a newspaper like The News plans to hire reporters, as opposed to continue laying them off like The News has regularly done in the past 10 years, then I'm inclined to pay more for my subscription. But, for just how much longer our culture will continue to pay for daily information media like the newspaper, remains to be seen.

On hold

This blog is on hiatus until the blogger who blogs here finished and successfully defends her thesis. Please, wish her well.