At my 45th high school reunion

Photo by Mitch Uzwack, All rights reserved

Goddesses with tennis rackets

"Elena Dementieva," Dewey Hicks, NY Times Magazine, All rights reserved

For the article, "How Power Has Transformed Women's Tennis, " in Sunday's NY Times Magazine, a special camera that makes over a thousand exposures a second was used to shoot top female tennis stars in action. The resulting animated videos are shockingly beautiful. I feel I am watching focused inexorable acts of will, performed by young women whose beauty is inseparable from the power they summon. This is hard to explain. Before I say any more, see the video for yourself:

These women seem to me goddesses the way the ancient Greeks conceived them. They are physically & emotionally conjoined to human women; formed from the same template -- but from finer, more perfect materials. Stronger, more beautiful, they are naturally above the mortal plane -- but not separate from it. As immortal goddesses they are somehow more intensely, vividly mortal than their human sisters.

Like their sisters, too, the goddesses have a touching vanity. Their long, beautiful hair is not tied back; it swirls around their faces. Their costumes are each a little different; the styles & colors are carefully chosen. They are jealous, competitive. It is perhaps an important source of their power. And they understand passion -- & vengeance. Look at their faces. Like Hera, the Queen of the Goddesses, they are not above turning a rival's long hair into snakes, or turning their husband's mistress into a cow, then driving her mad with biting flies.


"Serena Williams," Dewey Nicks, NY Times Magazine, All rights reserved

Leonard Cohen: young man in a cold city

In 1965 or so, before the world went crazy, Leonard Cohen was a poet, not a songwriter. He was actually famous as a poet, at least in the small sophisticated city (Montreal) where he grew up. Seeing this movie made my heart ache because Cohen is exactly who I wanted to be at that time -- I was finishing high school. He's witty, lyric & tender without being soft (I could never have pulled that off). And he has impregnable self-confidence without ever losing his sense of his own absurdity. No wonder the guy later ran away to a monastery for his middle years. Who could have retained any kind of humanhood as the genius rock star hero poet guru prophet lover the media (all of us) wanted to make him into, starting about 1967?

I loved this film. Listen to Cohen talk about hotel rooms and about the generous beauty of women.

Thanks to brother Tony for the tip. Go here for hundreds of other free Canadian documentaries & animations.

Will shows a snakeskin he just found

"Will, New Hartford, CT," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Closeup: Arts & flowers

The five pictures that follow are my submission to a group show of closeup works. If accepted, they will appear in September. My artist's statement about this series is at the end of this post.


"Heart beacon: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved


"Stars moving inland: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved


"Trying to get to heaven: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved


"Pink star: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved


"Tendrils: Annie's garden," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

Artist's statement

I love it when different kinds of subject matter and forms of representation mix & ricochet off each other. The subject matter of this series of close-ups – from a garden wall painted with landscapes & flowers by an unknown artist, then grown over by actual plants – juxtaposes living nature & its created representations in paint. Framed close-ups of the juxtapositions are then represented by digital photography, which, in its illusion of timelessness, mixes ironically with the series’ themes of (relative) permanence & change.

Netflix Ninny project continues

We watched the 1st movie from the new Netflix list (see "Nibbling at Netflix"). It was "Noises Off," from a Broadway play, dir. by Peter Bogdanovitch, with Michael Caine, Carol Burnett & Christopher Reeves. Supposed to be a satire on the theater, a farce of a farce. It got stupider & more repetitive as it went. Yes, we know theater & theater people are professionally unembarrassable. "The play must go on." Bravo. So what? It sucked.

Wins The Grand Raspberry Award. Gets minus 8 stars. Don't watch it, even if you're stuck on a 12-hour flight.

New additions to NN list:

Weekend -- Jean Luc Godard
Nights of Cabiria -- Fellini
Dr. Strangelove -- Stanley Kubrick
Akira -- anime
Ghost in the Shell -- anime
Princess Mononoko -- " " Hayao Miyazaki
Castle in the Sky -- " " " "
Fanny @ Alexander -- Bergman
Dead Man Walking -- Sean Penn, Susan Sarandon, great soundtrack
Slacker -- Richard Linklater
Where Angels Fear to Tread -- Helen Mirren
Hudsucker Proxy
Cinema Paradiso
Breakfast at Tiffany's -- Capote novel, Audrey Hepburn
Jean de Florette
Death in Venice -- Visconti, Dirk Bogarde
Gotterdamerung -- " "
Rocco and His Brothers -- Visconti
The Leopard -- " "
The Haunting of Hill House
The Innocents -- adapted from Turn of the Screw, Deborah Kerr
Silence of the Lambs -- Jonathan Demme, Jody Foster
Might Must Fall
Night of the Hunter -- -- written by James Agee, dir by Charles Laughton, with Robt Mitchum, Lillian Gish (I think), Shelley Winter
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Legend of the Drunken Master -- Jackie Chan, kung fu
Kill Bill I & II -- Quentin Tarantino
Fight Club
The Shining -- Kubrick from Stephen King novel, Jack Nicholson
The Big Fish
The Commitments -- from Roddy Doyle novel
Crooklyn -- Spike Lee
Meyerling(?) -- 1936, Charles Boyer
The Warriors -- NYC gangs, 70s
The Year of Living Dangerously
Our Town -- Paul Newman
The Bad Seed
Heavenly Creatures -- Kate Winslett
Compulsion -- Leopold & Lowe (sp) story

Bodhisattva in metro

This lovely short film seduces you instead of hitting you over the head. Masterful pacing & a true eye (& love) for faces. Check it out.