Ways To Be Happy

Discontinuing Globality.org

2009-12-31T08:17:00.000-08:00

After a little more than six years, I'm closing down my blog. I started it back in 2003 as a continuation of my There And Here essays, exploring life across borders on a human scale. Later, I focused on video and film but kept the same domain name. The blog's done from WordHTML to pure HTML to Blogger.

I'll have another Website up soon with a different slant, a different format, and a different address. The Globality name is too far afield from where my interests lie these days. In October, I'll let the domain expire, but well before that I'll point to the new site from here. For now, keep an eye on my Flickr page.

Thank you to everyone who read Globality.org, commented on it, and encouraged me. I hope you'll follow me into this new chapter. Have a great 2010!

Way To Be Happy No. 32

2009-12-01T21:32:00.000-08:00

Be like this guy.

Way To Be Happy No. 31

2009-11-22T21:08:00.000-08:00

Imagine something different.

Way To Be Happy No. 30

2009-11-18T07:39:00.000-08:00

Appreciate some art.

Way To Be Happy No. 29

2009-11-10T10:50:00.000-08:00

Substitute faith for expectations.

Way To Be Happy No. 28

2009-11-08T22:00:00.001-08:00

Just say no to expensive and hard-to-get hallucinogens.

Way To Be Happy No. 27

2009-11-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

Help something grow.

Way To Be Happy No. 26

2009-10-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

Don't cling to old notions of what's valuable in life. Be thankful for the gift of questioning.

Way To Be Happy No. 25

2009-10-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Just do something?

Way To Be Happy No. 24

2009-09-22T21:49:00.000-07:00

Overcome jealousy.

Way To Be Happy No. 23

2009-09-14T21:38:00.000-07:00

Visit Seattle.

The Seattle Rock Orchestra, by the way, is a 30-piece orchestra. I'm trying not to think about how I can't be at this show, and having some luck with that. It's good not to agonize over what you're missing.

Way To Be Happy No. 22

2009-09-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

See Aretha Franklin in a 500-seat auditorium, if you can. Better yet, write about it this well.

Way To Be Happy No. 21

2009-09-10T05:35:00.000-07:00

Try something different for a while.

I'm not using Facebook for a while. Not sure how long. Yes, I'm missing some things. It's reconnected me with friends I hadn't heard from in a long time and found I still really like. But it seemed to constantly draw me in and suck up too much of my time.

In truth, for all its flaws, Facebook is too brilliant a tool to give up forever. But going without it for a while ought to be refreshing, and instructive.

Way To Be Happy No. 20

2009-08-15T19:43:00.000-07:00

See a movie you know next to nothing about.

Once you're set on seeing the movie, you might as well know as little as possible about the plot. And if you don't have any expectations other than, say, "It'll be a sci-fi film about aliens," then everything good about the movie is gravy. Even if it's basically a thorough condemnation of the human race.

Way To Be Happy No. 19: Laugh

2009-07-25T08:50:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-07-22T10:21:00.000-07:00

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

Way To Be Happy No. 17: Learn something

2009-07-14T22:11:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-05T21:49:00.001-07:00

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

2009-07-03T22:26:00.000-07:00

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.

Way To Be Happy No. 15

2009-06-30T06:04:00.000-07:00

Rediscover a food from your youth.

I first had this bread on family vacations at Sea Ranch when I was in college, or even before. Wonderful, chewy, perfect for toast. After I moved to Northern California, for some reason I didn't like it for a long time. Now it's my favorite sandwich bread.

Way To Be Happy No. 14

2009-06-25T22:37:00.001-07:00

Wait until tomorrow.

Way To Be Happy No. 13

2009-06-24T13:48:00.000-07:00

Close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Think of a place where you felt safe. Probably a place with lots of positive associations and few negative ones. Go there in your mind. What does it look like? What does it sound like? How does it smell? What's it like in the morning? At night?

Just place yourself there and remember the details. Or invent them, if you're that kind of person. Let that place calm you.

Way To Be Happy No. 12

2009-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Stop complaining. (Thanks for the ancient link, Jessica!)

Frameline

2009-06-20T22:12:00.000-07:00

Since I completely skipped blogging about SFIFF, I'm going to write something about the two films we've seen so far at Frameline, the San Francisco LGBT film festival. Today we saw The Butch Factor and Dare.

First of all, neither one is a film per se. They're both on digital video (unless I'm really missing something), but there's a lot of great work being done on video these days, so that's no strike against them. I did notice that the audio on Dare was sometimes hard to understand in the Castro Theatre because it was compressed way beyond normal theatrical sound.

I'm surprised no documentary before (that I knew of) had specifically tackled the topic that director Christopher Hines covers so thoroughly in The Butch Factor. The 87-minute feature explores gay men's complicated relationship with masculinity. The core segments of the film, and the freshest material here, are profiles of several gay men who play traditionally masculine roles: rugby player, construction worker, rodeo bull rider, and so on. Candid interviews about real people's lives often make for the best documentary material, and that's certainly true in The Butch Factor. We learn about the confusion these men felt while growing up and their sometimes painful experiences with living in the closet, as well as the camaraderie they feel just from hanging out with the guys.

Hines is a pro, and to paint a complete picture, he includes a few gay men with different approaches to masculinity. Along the way, the movie makes the point that sometimes the effeminate gay men are the toughest because they had to become that way.

The movie was exhaustively researched, with interviews of a wide variety of men all over the U.S. That's both its strength and its weakness. For me as a journalist, watching The Butch Factor sometimes felt like sifting through a cornucopia of great interviews and angles for a feature story. I felt the urge to edit and to hone the focus of the film. There are topics that are covered more than once when they don't really need to be.

Hines does give us breadcrumbs, though: Those are the little details that keep us interested through the film. The subjects are likable and there's enough humor in the movie to at least lighten up the expansive subject matter. Nevertheless, the movie felt longer than 87 minutes. In fairness, I should add that the seats in the Victoria Theatre (otherwise wonderfully restored) get uncomfortable pretty quick.

The Butch Factor is a comprehensive look at an important subject, to be enjoyed in the comfort of your living room -- or, as one person in the audience suggested, in every high school in America.

Dare is a wonderful expansion of a short that showed at Frameline four years ago. It's about a high school actress and her unpopular friend, the A/V guy, who follow their attraction to the Big Man On Campus, Johnny Drake, to an uncomfortable destination. The writing is nuanced, the direction is assured, and the performances by a stunning cast (Emmy Rossum, Zach Gilford of "Friday Night Lights," Alan Cumming, and Sandra Bernhard, among others) are superb. We got to see Gilford stretch a bit from his FNL role as sensitive underdog Matt Saracen, though he gets back on more familiar ground as Dare digs deeper into Johnny's character. Gilford was at the screening along with Rossum, director Adam Salky and writer David Brind for a lively Q&A afterward. Brind was the only gay person among them; it's nice to see another successful gay-straight film team.

Way To Be Happy No. 11

2009-06-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, having a good cry. This ought to do it.