Pristine Angie’s Good Homemaker Adventures at www.d332.com

Recently I had some male company over. Rough trade: people who’d crushed O’Doul’s cans against their foreheads after emptying three in a row. Every chef locked their quiche up when these guys rolled into town.

Anyway, one of them was going through my dvd of absent-minded video “notes” (scenes from movies I extracted as notes to myself) when they came upon 3 minutes of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. I was outed. Instead of presenting a pile of Maxim subscription cards to evidence my invertebrate manliness, I simply answered “what the hell is this?” with:

I kept this scene of Lola/Mary saying “it’s the best day ever” (when she found out she had been selected for the lead of a school play) because it puzzled me. Do you ever wonder how is it that the smallest thing can easily turn a day into “the best day ever” when we were all younger? And despite the inflation of dreams in our adult lives, a whole lot is still not enough to make a good day a great one? It’s not so much about the essentials that went into making a best day, it’s the elegant simplicity of the desire itself: one single event was enough to make a day stand out when we were young. In the peer-conscious company of adult males, nothing short of a blond trophy wife, high-fives from office underlings, thumbs-up approval from black males, hole-in-one, Vegas jackpot, while sucking down a prime rib winning a poker hand while doing it with two girls and getting a promotion all at once can even begin to make a day come close to being a the best day ever.

Certainly the danger of complacency is lurking wherever adults have days that need very little to achieve greatness. Those who asked for less are sentenced to extinction among Darwinian achievers. In the moment of nostalgia however, I opened my eyes this morning as I lay in bed, and that singular event, was enough to make my day.

Oh alright! So the stuff bunny was nuzzling against my neck too!

I normally don’t go out that often in the summer season. The heat’s just too much. Besides, who wants to leave the house when all the cuddly stuff animals are comfy waiting in my bed? Well, this year, I thought I break with tradition and give the short sleeve a twirl. After all, my fashion bible, Teen Vogue has miraculously picked outfits with looks that I’ve adored for years. Anyhow, enjoy this set and there’ll be more to come shortly! I’m gonna give more attention to the photo gallery. Cross my heart!

It’s always mildly disturbing when I hear people dish out selective compassion.

“I’ll never eat lamb because all lambs are cute. I’ll eat chicken and beef cause cows are ugly.”

“Poor crabs, they are so adorable. I can’t possibly eat them. I love lobster though.”

It’s disturbing because it supports the notion that living things (and people) that look good don’t deserve pain.

…but it’s okay for the one’s who don’t to get hell.

I just hope Clarice Starling knows a good plastic surgeon.

The eighth record of John McLaughlin’s cult fusion band Mahavishnu Orchestra is now truncated to simply “Mahavishnu.” This effort, originally released in 1984, has since been ignored and quietly tucked under the carpet of the McLaughlin discography. Many see it as a period of transition between McLaughlin, the electric guitar god and McLauglin, acoustic guitarist/composer. Any album utilizing cutting-edge technology always risks sounding dated years later. It is in this context one needs to listen to content while consciously filtering out the overcompressed drums, the 80s handclaps, and the biggest culprit of them all: those Yamaha DX7 keyboard stabs.

For well-seasoned fans of John McLaughlin’s furious guitar shredding abilities, the Synclavier II guitar synthesizer actually triumphs in its realization of this musician’s signature sound. Listen carefully to McLaughlin’s unadorned, slippery pearl-like notes on Miles Davis’s Live Evil from 1970 and you will find that the Synclavier II’s timbre-shaping features allowed McLaughlin not only to bring his esoteric tone into the modern era, but improve on the microtonal bends that he has produced with a scalloped fretboard on many of his guitars throughout his career.

One of the things I often get asked about is the setting of the photographs in my photo section. A typical letter would go something like this: “Pristine, you write about representing and going out and not worrying too much about passing. But we don’t see any pictures of you going out and about. Now why is that?”

First off, I’ve never really felt the need to answer those mildly accusatory questions. I pretty much come from the attitude of “believe what you chose to believe, I know what I do, and that’s enough.”

But after thinking about it a little, I started wondering myself, “Hey! How is it that I don’t have that many pictures of me gallivanting about town?” I guess the most obvious answer stems from sheer unadulterated embarrassment. I’d wince whenever I see a self-absorbed woman (or transperson) endlessly posing in public in front of a camera. I can understand if it’s for keepsake, but I’ve never come to a full understanding of the whole “Out and About” photo section in many trans-websites. It may not be easy, and to this day, I am still aspiring to some aesthetic quality of the self-portrait. A part of me sees it as a timestamp, while the other part sees it as a visual diary of form.

Also to tote along a camera (in my tight too superlow jeans or little purse) kills the silhouette. Not to mention the fact that it’s a horrendous interruption on the craft of merry-making to halt all activities with a “here’s a camera, take a picture of me! me! me! dressed up out and about.”

This explains another reason why I don’t frequent trans-friendly bars and nightclubs. If you do it everywhere you go, there’s really no event in going out on a special T* night, to do the same exact thing you do every other night out.

It would be like a librarian going to a bookstore on her day off!

I’m looking over other people’s Top Ten Most Romantic Movies list and I gotta say it: Who is this Meg Ryan? I’ve never heard nor seen a movie with her in it. Gentle readers of d332.com might think that your humble writer is one of those stodgy bookworms who sit at home and listen to NPR and pledges to PBS. And while it’s true that I go to the cinema once every five years (last two movies I saw were D.E.B.S., and Goya in Bordeaux), I do have my very own ten most romantic movies. I have been writing them down on my collection of top ten list for years. Here they are.

1. Natural Born Killers

Oh what lovely chemistry between Juliet Lewis and Woody Harrelson! From the opening musical collage of Patti Smith’s rock and roll song to The Cowboy Junkies’ rendition of Sweet Jane, this throw-in-the-kitchen-sink attempt by Oliver Stone is a one-of-its-kind romance flick. The inverted footage of a galloping wild horse along the backdrop of a south eastern desert ranks as one of the most sensual movie moments for me. It’s a metaphor of every teenage girl’s dream of freedom. And if that isn’t enough, well then there’s always the romance of running off with the local butcher after he successfully exorcises the Rodney Dangerfield from your all-American dad.

2. Wild At Heart

Nicholas Cage’s Elvis and Laura Dern’s bubble-gum chewing Lula are my favorite onscreen romantic movie couple. I mean, sex, pedicures, and thrash metal moshing is like, total guaranteed formula for romance. The way Lula gazes dreamily at Sailor with her big dark eyebrows is every girl’s first cherished ideal of being in love. And of course, there’s the reappearing motif of escaping the psychotic disapproving forbidding parental unit. This shouldn’t be read in any way as a reflection of the listmaker’s personal life, of course.

3. Immortal Beloved

Next to Kieslowski’s Short Film on Killing and Camera Buff, this was the only movie that big fat tears rolled out of my eyes when I was in the movie theatre. The notion of an angry, annoying, temperamental fella throwing tantrums for the first 99% of the movie, before revealing a pure unending love is for me, a wonderful romance story: It shows how easily we can make mistaken assumptions about a person, and that love is more often than not, a deep, personal, and intensely private affair. The stately scene where Isabella Rosselini gets onstage to accompany the composer out of the hall after failed starts at his Emperor Concerto No.5 is the greatest onscreen moment. For a person to stand by a failed person, in the face of hundreds of disapproving looks, is love and charity personified.

4. A Patch of Blue

Continuing on the theme of seen versus unseen, we come across one of my earliest picks of romantic movies. Throughout this movie, Sidney Poitier is beleaguered by the eventual revelation of his skin color to a blind girl he has befriended. The most lovely moment is at the point when he does, and Elizabeth Hartman shrugs and says, “like ya dude, I knew that all along.” Just the look on Poitier’s face is worth a thousand words. In my opinion, it’s the triumphant moment of celluloid accomplishment in showing just how precious it is for every person to be truly seen as who they are, against society’s instructions on how to look at him or her. The closing scene with Poitier running down the staircase only to miss her departing car by seconds before Jerry Goldsmith’s piano score wafts in between the leaves of the streetside trees is that delicate romantic screen moment that I’ll always cherish.

(more…)

Here I am, ready to practice a round of kissing with my cute cuddly stuff animals. Oh what a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

I’m still here. Don’t worry. Just re-adjusting to my new workplace after two years of being a playgirl traveling around the world without a worry. Well much more to come very soon, stay tune, my gentle gracious, and adorable readers!