It's always tough to select a photo for the day. I want to put them all up at once but I'm going to pace myself. Come to think of it, I have a photo that seems to echo the sentiment of the second sentence in this post. So, boys and girls, the theme for today is "one at a time."

Toll taker. GG bridge. Friday evening sunset on his face.

I took myself out on a date tonight. I painted and cleaned my apt all day today so I took myself out. Away from the fumes. I got dressed in the clothes I like myself best in. I liked myself. Ouch. I got estoned. Ay yai chi chi. I masturbated. Hey, I’m takin’ myself out – I’m gonna get lucky fist thing. Don’t have to wait till the end when you’re dating yourself. I cleaned up and went out onto the street. I’m hungry and I’m takin’ myself to dinner. I bet there’s a space at the bar at Puerto Allegre. Oh yeah. You cannot believe how fast that first margarita goes down. I order me up some dinner. Enchilada plate fits perfectly in my stomach. That is, mixed with another margarita. They showed war films on the TV while I ate. They (NBC) flipped back and forth between the Pacific and the European front. Gorgeous stuff. I paid up and hit the streets again. Takin’ myself for a walk. Around the bleedin’ Mission. I got cold after a while and came home to my stinky house and my ‘puter. And as is usually the case after going to Puerto Allegre, I'm giong to bed drunk.

Jellyfish sting like a motherfucker. Monterey Aquarium.

I'd love to do a systematic investigation of every reflective shot in Yi Yi. I can think of 10 stunning examples off the top of my head. In the director's comments track on the DVD you can hear Edward get noticeably excited when another reflective shot presents itself on screen. He points them all out, and it's true that the shots do seem to present themselves to the director. Although you must assume he had something to do with them, he confesses that it was magic that he discovered when he got to the location. Neither he nor I can explain what effect the superimposition of a night cityscape on a dark office space has on our understanding of the emotional world of the character sandwiched between the layers of light. It seems there is magic at work all around. But it is not magic at all, as we learn from Mr. Ota's card trick -- merely attention. Maybe it's the reflection's ability to split out attention out into many streams of thought and quickly focus it back down that gives his scenes their vertiginous exhilaration. How else to explain the rush one feels from looking at a completely static shot where you can barely make out the actors? He set out to make a film about family but I think he discovered he also wanted to make a film about life in Taipei. The reflections are the device that lets him make two movies at once. I think that's what is most special about each reflective shot. It is the instantaneous visual realization of an epic goal, and a reminder to the audience of both themes working in the movie. His assuredness and gentleness astounds me.

I can recommend Last's Paint on Mission near 18th. They're indie and they're local. Their paint is drying on my walls right now. It stinks. I like the blue but I'm not sure about the orange. I can recommend Yi Yi but I can't make you rent it. Let's see what I can do...I watched it about a couple of weeks ago and it has not worn off. I will not let go of this film. I rented the DVD again tonight to listen to the directors commentary. Edward Yang is the director and writer and he's kicking some serious ass. He's now up there (in my mind) with Yasujiro Ozu, Satayajit Ray and Jean Renior and Robert Altman. The directors I mentioned all seem to be able to make you believe you are watching the bare existence of the people in their films and then whammo, you realize they're playing on a huge romantic/mythical level. Yang's directing is absolutely fascinating. He makes Wong Kar-Wai and Paul Thomas Anderson (two guys trying so hard to do what he does so easily) look like film style shysters. He hangs back, letting scenes develop without moving the camera and then hanging out long after they're over. You get a chance to see what other movies cut out. And because the characters are all so wound up and stressed out, you have to sit and watch them for a while before they drop their guard and give you a peep at what's bothering them. It's amazingly seductive. And, it lulls you into an over attentive state that by the 3rd hour of the film is being lashed with spiked belts of beauty. I was leaning over, clutching my gut, wiping my eyes, shaking my head and wondering if the film was going to let me out alive. Exhausted by magic blinking-heart-streetlights in the reflections of office windows; redeemed by transcendent words falling out of an 8 year old boy. Eat well before seeing it.

Worked all friggin night on a slideshow feature for this blog. Of course it doesn't work with Netscape 4. Of course. I still get 15 percent of the people who hit my site identifying themselves as being NS4. That's an awfully big thorn in my side. I'm sure you're not using that old stuff.

Forget it. Here's another picture. In honor of my stove. Since I just used it to heat up soup.

In case you're curious about the popup window, the code is from CodeLifter.

I rested my poor head tonight and missed the softball game with the architects, that was too bad. Ted said I could come as long as I didn't get as wasted at the afterparty as I did last time. He's still buggin that I killed him in ping-pong.

I fixed the youthilne.org website today. The agency details page had been broken for more than a month and nobody ever told me.

This is the BART station. I think it's New Montgomery. Isn't it nice?

How do I make a 5.1 surround sound theater system that is portable and can be used outdoors? This can be sorted out later, of course. But I just don't want to buy a non-portable system for my microcinema and then have to use a separate one when I do outdoor shows. I've been looking at DJ equipment but it's all 2 channel.

I thought I'd either buy the Sanyo XP18n or XP21n. And I'd do it quickly. Silent projections on a wall down near 16th and Valencia on the weekends. I have hours of footage of India -- street scenes and the like, that don't make compelling narrative but in the context of all those drunk people stumbling around in their black clothes I think it would be interesting. I'd like to sit out on warm nights with friends and drink beers and watch the people go by and just shoot pictures up onto something. I could combine all my favorite things in one activity.

On the subject of street art, here's one hand-dandy piece of information: free street power. In every Muni bus shelter there are regular power outlets. I found this out when I was watching some punk bands play in front of the Bart entrance at 16th and Mission. After shaking off the surprise of their presence, (Why have I never seen this? Why always preachers with bullhorns?) I looked for the generator but there was only an orange cord taped to the red bricks. I followed it incredulously to the bus stand. It snaked up the black pole next to the street map and up over the crossbar. On top of that metal bar running from front to back under the arch, there's a little metal plate that you can remove and expose the outlets. They played for hours and the cops never did anything.

I listened to a great rant about art by Billy Childish where he throws poop on the critics and says "the lie of originality, the ignorance of its champions and the intrinsic honesty of plagiarism." I just want to say that I'm through with originality. Go Billy.

I was sitting on the corner of 18th and Valencia under the Cherin's Appliances sign waiting for my Ricas Pupusas and feeling like the chain-link fence that my back was leaning against might be a little to springy for good chain-link fence leaning when a guy on a skateboard comes whipping down the street and barely steers his board up the wheelchair ramp onto the sidewalk where I was sitting. He made the daring maneuver because he spotted me sitting on my skate and wanted to come and sit with me.

He had blue pants on that were cut off below the knee. He had blue Nike basketball shoes. He had a blue poly long-sleeved dress shirt that was really tight and unbuttoned at the cuffs. It was Gary. We've talked that sorta witty, seat-of-your-pants banter off and on at parties and bars for the last 7 or 8 years. That's about all we've done with each other. Well, bumbed cigs and drank too I suppose. We saw each other at Amnesia last Sunday and managed to break through the odd "I probably know you, or I think I did 3 years ago" thing and had a nice little chat and I realized that he's got a thing about him that I like. I can fairly say that he possesses a mind which is freely-associative and quick witted without the nagging dementia that can set in once you cruise past your 20's. Boys like him are becoming rarer these days.

So we looked at the various foxy hipster girls walking by and I explained what a pupusa was and he decided to eat some.

While we were in Ricas Pupusas Gary looked toward me in a sincere kind of way and said, "I think we should be friends." I was kind of shocked but pleasantly surprised. I liked his delivery. It occurred to me that I was interested in just that sort of thing. Already accepting the idea that we were gonna try to be friends, I said, "What do you wanna do?" And he said, "Well, it doesn't really matter, I just thought...." And I immediately reassured him that the answer to my question was not a condition upon which I was going to base my response. I indeed wanted to be friends with him. No male has asked me to be friends in years.

There was long grass coming out of the chain-link fence and tickling my back so when our pupusas were ready I suggested that we go to the other side of the street and eat them. Gary liked the pupusas. He likes kim chee and the cabbage stuff on top is kind of similar. The chain-link fence in front of the used car lot was much more supportive.

When we were done eating I brought up the subject of being friends again and we shook on it. I put his digits in my cell phone but we didn't make any plans. I'm sure he likes surprises as much as I do. He skated off up Valencia and I skated down 18th.

If there is ghetto style for the Internet, it must be ASCII art. If you don't think big block letters of your name made out of dashes, slashes and pipes is fuckin wicked, well, you must not be from the Intenet "hood". Anybody that don't have a badass sig (not that you gotta flash it every time) is definitely not OG. Just thought I'd throw mine up there since I'm starting this thing off. Wanna pad the results. Yaknow?

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computer living offers you more   dave(at)primco.org

I'm going to include photos. I just decided. Not like I have any big traditions to go back on. This is my first online writing in a year. Ok -- six months. I did do this a while ago. At the time I had a long way to go to getting further away.

I have the urge to put in all kinds of wack crap that will get my page listed in fucked up web searches. When someone searches on the Internet and then clicks on the results they get from google, the keywords they searched with end up in your website logs. It is one of my favorite pastimes to find the paths that people can dream up to get to my web. 99.999 percent of them would naturally have NO interest in my site.

I've had people directed to primco.org after searching for "bowling alleys for sale" on google and you don't wanna know what else. OK if you do, go to the Disturbing Search Requests weblog and see if the whackos have come up with anything new since "translucent hindu shepherd flyboy porn"

Here's my photo for the day. It's a picture of a diorama in Mission Dolores. I took it while the glass was reflecting the figures of some people looming over the little pastoral indian figures. It's a nice reminder of what used to be my neighborhood.