Way To Be Happy No. 19: Laugh

Looking at the brochure for the arty Nissan Cube, I asked myself, "What would Andy Warhol drive?" So I Googled that very phrase and found this.

Way To Be Happy No. 18: Ask yourself ...

... at the end of the day, what would it have gained you to be unhappy?

Way To Be Happy No. 17: Learn something

This picture was taken in 1924 by the Russian photographer and artist Aleksander Rodchenko. Not only does it look amazingly contemporary, but the subject, poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, was a pretty contemporary figure, too, a sort of Henry Rollins of the early USSR.

"The poet, two years younger than Rodchenko, had been a celebrity since 1913. He saw himself as the "drummer" of the Russian Revolution and wrote a vernacular poetry meant for declamation. Most at home in the heroic era up to 1924, he cultivated the menacing look of a gangster." -- Ian Jeffrey, How to Read a Photograph

The directness of the pose, the severity of his expression, and the masculine physicality against that rather natty suit point directly to today's fashion photography. It's a long way from what most of us think of as a "1920s" look.

Way To Be Happy No. 16: Remember You're Part of Something

A college friend alerted me over the weekend that KLOS was having a "legends of LA rock radio weekend," or something of the sort, with a bunch of the old DJs from long-gone KMET sitting in. If they were on when I was listening, their voices must have changed. But the old songs took me back.

I don't mean I was lost in a reverie of nostalgia, because that particular substance scarcely exists in me today, at least in its usual form. Nostalgia is just an illusion, a psychological litmus test that helps us understand what's missing in our lives. But it's an objective fact that I belong to a generation that is defined, in some irreducible part, by the opening chords of "Smoke On The Water" by Deep Purple. I didn't have to read this in a book, or on Twitter, or see Dazed and Confused, to know this. I didn't even have to like the song. And it was good to be reminded of this, and to briefly be drawn into an e-mail chain of people who all know this without having to say it. (Somehow I pictured us all as Jim Anchower, forgetting for the moment that we're closer to Don Draper these days.)

A few months ago I saw a crazy middle-aged man stumbling down the street, howling some song we all heard on the radio too many times when we were young. It was just stuck in this man's head in a more profound and damaging way than it was in my own. This irritated me, and I thought to myself that when today's young generation gets to be my age, they won't have this problem. The middle-aged homeless man of 2035 will be singing a song that maybe 2 percent of his contemporaries will recognize, because they all grew up listening to different music on their own individual iPods. The large-scale broadcast technology of my youth shaped me in some ways that feel like Cylon programming, as when I respond to the siren call of the oldies playlist in a Lucky Jeans store. But there are times when it comforts, too. We all need to belong to something other than our gated communities or, in fact, the cultural affinity groups we may consider so chic. Personally, I listen mostly to Taiwanese rock and pop these days, because it's the new thing in my life and it's fun to get to know more artists and fans in this area. (And, incidentally, because it reminds me of Seventies music.) But it's good to know that "Smoke On The Water" belongs to me, and I belong to "Smoke On The Water."

All of which reminds me that tonight on KLOS, the legendary KMET comedy DJ Dr. Demento was going to do a full hour of his old records. That'd be over by now, and I missed it. Just as well. A Sunday night of that would have sent me over the edge.

Quick take: Of Time and the City

Last year I heard Terence Davies narrating Distant Voices, Still Lives at PFA. It was an autobiographical film to start with, and he took it the extra step and just talked over it, explaining the references and telling additional anecdotes. His latest film, Of Time and the City, is just like that. He's dispensed with the art of using "fictional" characters, and actors, and sets, and just about anything new. He just talks over old found footage and borrowed music.

Terence Davies is an old codger. He's also a genius, and Of Time and the City is a deeply moving film. It's about Liverpool in the mid-20th century, as well as aging, generations, urban planning, England, life, death, and countless other things. Somehow it made me pine for my own youth and remember things I'd forgotten for years (well, they were things about England). A deep and gorgeous movie.