Bi-Plane

Absolute supinity has driven me back to Facebook. Facebook is like the New York City of the Internet; who would believe it could be possible to be surrounded by so many people and feel so alone. I attempted to reverse the usual process today, making a concerted effort to look through photos and posts and think about the authors in a favorable light, sending good energy their way instead of wondering to myself what were they thinking. Instead, I asked myself, what are you thinking?

As of today I am decidedly post-Instagram. Yet again, I got suckered into another product that purported to confer cheap and easy coolness upon a life that, apparently, just wasn’t interesting enough. The upside is that, in the process, Instagram has deconstructed the essence of itself for us: It demands we confront the fact that we don’t like ourselves and our surroundings enough to examine and find pleasure in the real and actual detail they possess. Instagram suggests that if we augment what’s already there by filtering, saturating and weathering our every days into something that more resembles 32 years ago… it’s somehow better, cooler, more relevant. The fact that very few people have actually mastered it to the point of evolution only proves my point. Which brings us back to nostalgia and our goddamn weird fascination with it, our need to be validated by it. Truly, I cannot go on any more about this.

(That said, there is this one guy named Gerter who is really amazing with the Instagram. He uses is to create something new, new on a phone. Check him out.)

Either the New Yorker has made a conscious choice to go annoyingly global or I am becoming a goddamn stick in the mud. I just can’t seem to get through an entire article anymore. This week: Radical muslims in Alexandria (yawn), purported comedic piece on DPRK (20 words stroked into 600), investigative piece about raw dairy wars in California (enjoyable), ominous observation of Stanford U. connection to Silicon Valley (Internet wealth, Internet wealth… yawn) and what appears to be about 15,000 words devoted to a secret vault of riches underneath a temple in India (mmmmm… maybe Netlix is streaming  Indiana Jones) Come on man, what the fuck? I’m on muscle relaxers, I’m all the way over heah. Already.

Last night I watched a Robert Redford stunt pilot movie set in the 1920’s. Redford, now there’s a man of passions. My wife once met him when she was five years old. My wife has relatives that used to live in the apartment next to his. Liz n’ Red were introduced in the hall. He was very kind, she said.

Liz and I also met Ethan Hawke last week. What a guy. We were at a party together. It must be a real trade-off, being that famous. He never seemed to get comfortable. But we played guitars with some other people in a circle and he sang a duet with his daughter, which was sweet. I told him that I enjoyed his second novel, which was mostly true. Liz said he was as nice as Redford. This may be true but I seriously doubt he can fly a bi-plane.